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Perhaps the chief joy of Michael Drayton's song of unrequition (which I
first heard of when Jorie Graham read it on National Public Radio a few
years ago) is the stubborn confusion it induces in the reader, a mirror
of the feelings Drayton's scornful beloved provokes in him. The music of
the poem--which is considerable--turns on the repetition of the words
"no" and "I" (which often stands in for its homophone "aye"), including
the normally unattractive practice of rhyming both words with themselves.
The confusion lives in this repetition too, not simply because Drayton
forces the reader to consider when "I" means "I" and when it means "aye"
instead (or as well), but also because Drayton, echoing the end against
the beginning, produces a conclusion which seems musically and
emotionally satisfying at the same time that it may not mean what it
seems to at all.
 I suspect that the initial appeal to a modern reader is the poem's very
modern tone and directness. The first line, "Nothing but no and I, and I
and no," sounds almost like a child's complaint against an uncooperative
parent (or vice versa)--conversational, lean, and immediately indicative
of the argument which the reader as yet has no context for. "How falls
it out so strangely you reply?" introduces inverted word order, but no
now-archaic terms and nothing not emotionally clear (except that it
leaves unexplained whether "I" is "I" or "aye".) That question is not
resolved by the following lines in which Drayton claims that he will not
accept "this affirming no, denying I." The obvious polarity of this
charmingly Metaphysical coupling would be "no" and "aye," of course, but
it is impossible to deny that the "denying I" may be both the beloved,
using the first person as she repulses Drayton's advances, and a weird
sort of identification of Drayton himself, "I" standing in for the more
usual "me" or his name. Astute readers will also note its suggestion of
the beloved's denying eye.
In the second quatrain, the beloved's puled and sighed "no"s are sharp
enough, but the "I" still resists definition. "I say I love, you
slightly answer I?" Is she asking if he loves her, or if he loves
indeed? The coyness suggested by this confusion, as well as the
reader's mental picture of the conversational scene, is as conventional
and nearly static as a painted rendering, but the music carries the
emotional weight forward into the third quatrain, where Drayton tries to
achieve a psychological balance, as delicate and likely to tumble as the
poem's almost overpowering iambs, with their inevitable evocation, in
this context, of a lopsided argument.
"Must woe and I, have naught but no and I?" he asks, creating an
effective internal rhyme which links himself with both woe and no.
But he repudiates the tie in another echo, asserting "I am I" over
against "no and I" and demanding that his beloved speak no more if "no"
and "I" are her only replies. Instead, he says, he will "take my selfe
what I doe crave." Oddly enough, in a poem built around verbal
ambiguity, this is the first point in which a truly syntactical ambiguity
appears. Does Drayton mean that he himself will simply take what he
wants, presumably the beloved? Or is "what I doe crave" in apposition to
"my selfe," making the whole of the poem an encounter with an echo in
which the other is actually the speaker?
The couplet does not seem to "solve" the mystery with its "Let no and I,
with you and I be so"--a request that seems at first to reiterate his
perpetual request, for true love to grow between "I and you." And the
comparison--the "be so"--is that "I and you" be as "no and I" have
been, that is, a constant couple. But what sort of couple are "no and
I"? An opposing couple, a polar couple, exactly what Drayton has not
wanted. Is the couplet then a reversal, rather than a summation, of the
quatrains? Apparently yes, since the second line of the couplet is "Then
aunswer no, and I, and I, and no," a petition that the "contrary" beloved
continue as she has been. But is such a reversal consistent with the
first twelve lines, a believable resignation to a situation in which
Drayton cannot win?
Or is it possible that the sonnet is not, thematically, the construction
of three quatrains and couplet that it is architecturally? If we
consider the sonnet a construction of octave and sestet, an Italian
sonnet despite its rhyme scheme, then the reversal or "turn" generally
expected of an Italian sonnet begins exactly where it ought, in the ninth
line in which Drayton asks if his current condition be ongoing--"Must
woe and I, have naught but no and I?" In this case, Drayton has indeed
surrendered to his beloved's resistance and has adopted himself, his own
I, in her place. Herewith, the beloved, the "you," has become her "no",
which stands in opposition to his "I", which is still, to be sure, also
an "aye", an affirmation. And thus the sonnet opens itself out, in two
very distinct manners, a sign of the dexterity with which Drayton was
able to manipulate such "simple" and often declarative sentences.
"Sonet 8"
Nothing but no and I, and I and no,
How falls it out so strangely you reply?
I tell yee (Faire) Ile not be aunswered so,
With this affirming no, denying I,
I say I love, you slightly aunswer I?
I say you love, you pule me out a no;
I say I die, you eccho me with I,
Save me I cry, you sigh me out a no:
Must woe and I, have naught but no and I?
No, I am I, If I no more can have,
Aunswer no more, with silence make reply,
And let me take my selfe what I doe crave;
Let no and I, with I and you be so,
Then aunswer no, and I, and I, and no.
(Text from "Minor Poems of Michael Drayton", chosen and edited by Cyril
Brett [Oxford : 1907])
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