Shakespeare’s enigmatic and fascinating poem about the love-death union of two lovers symbolized as the phoenix and the turtledove. The symbolism of two who are paradoxically one in love, in religion, and in poetic metaphor, which says “A is B.”

The ironic themes in the beautiful youth sequence include old age and death and the possibility of infidelity. The Dark Lady sequence begins with mildly tender irony and moves to fierce condemnation of both the Lady and love itself.

Ideal resolutions in the beautiful youth sequence include (1) urging the youth to marry and perpetuate his beauty through offspring; (2) finding their own Platonic love satisfying; (3) making the youth immortal through the poet’s art. Famous examples of each.

Shakespeare’s texts, both the plays and the sonnets, are “equivocal.” They are endlessly suggestive because they seem to offer a range of interpretive possibilities, from the ideal to the ironic, and force the reader to read actively and choose. Sonnets 12, 20, and 29: the beautiful youth and an ideal love.

The Sonnets constantly suggest a total order and total meaning. Yet they simultaneously suggest that such an order is “undecidable,” tantalizing yet elusive. The meaning of a text and the meaning of a love affair may be undecidable, despite our repeated attempts to find a definitive meaning or moral in them.

The two sequences, the “beautiful youth” sonnets (1-126) and the Dark Lady sonnets (127-52), are so distinctive, so unlike the standard Courtly Love formulas, that it is natural to wonder if they are based on real life, but there is no proof. The enigmatic Dedication to the sonnets only confuses the issue. The beautiful youth is a young male, and in the opening sonnets, the poet urges him to perpetuate his beauty by breeding. Later, the poet promises another form of immortality, in his verse.

The various conspiracy theories about alternate authorship of Shakespeare’s works. What we actually do know about Shakespeare, as opposed to the various legends.

The Arthurian stories or Matter of Britain are not just a set of tales but a vision evolving through time, at the hands of many authors. A brief look at the conclusion of Malory’s Morte Darthur, where the destruction of all that Arthur created suggests an ideal too great for this imperfect earth. And yet, the prophecy that Arthur will return someday.

Gawain’s adventure consists of two contests or games. Huizinga’s Homo Ludens: human culture as play, as game-playing. But for real stakes. Gawain is really striving not for a prize or fame but for loyalty to virtue. He comes short because he is human and imperfect, but we must strive anyway, or nothing is achieved.

The lord’s wife tries three times to seduce Gawain while her husband is out hunting, but Gawain resists. On New Year’s, Gawain endures his ordeal at the Green Knight’s “chapel,” an opening in the earth. He feels shame that he has tried to cheat by wearing the lady’s magic belt that confers invulnerability, but the Knight commends him, and back at home the lords and ladies all wear green belts in his honor.