The whole gist of the sonnet Shakespeare writes with a dog <br />in his mind, comes down to his metaphor describing love <br />as that 'star to every wandering bark/ Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.' No one really knows why dogs <br />bark and howl at the stars. Maybe they do it because they're uncertain of what the stars will do and they fear them. And the uncertainty about whether dogs are uncertain about the stars is the same as one's uncertainty about love. That is the connection Shakespeare's metaphor is trying to make about barking: It is another wandering bark the dog yearns for, but cannot fully understand. And not only are we uncertain about love and why dogs bark and howl at the stars with uncertainty, we too sometimes question our uncertainty and remain somewhat lost on a 'wandering bark, ' whether we can read the constellations or not. Shakespeare understood the crisis. When the speaker says <br />love's worth is unknown, 'although his height be taken, ' <br />he personifies our yearning for love as a dog's wandering bark <br />that might never reach the one it is calling to. Dogs know this feeling well and, as Sonnet #116 proves, so did Shakespeare. The speaker suggests that although we do not fully understand love, even when <br />the worth of it is not unknown, as Shakespeare's dog worried in his mind before barking, we are in awe of it like the dog to the stars.<br /><br />Doren Robbins<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/shakespeare-s-dog-sonnet/
