Shakespeare’s Sonnets – Page 3 – Interesting Literature

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 81: ‘Or I shall live your epitaph to make’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 81 (‘Or I shall live your epitaph to make’) is another poem that deals with the notion of immortality through poetry: the poet will make the Fair Youth live on through his verses about him. Stephen Booth, in his analysis of the Sonnets, has nearly five whole pages of annotations on Sonnet 81, indicating that, whilst its meaning may seem clear enough, it has hidden ambiguities.

Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten,
From hence your memory death cannot take,
Although in me each part will be forgotten.
Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:
The earth can yield me but a common grave,
When you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie.
Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o’er-read;
And tongues to be your being shall rehearse,
When all the breathers of this world are dead;
You still shall live, such virtue hath my pen,
Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73: ‘That time of year thou mayst in me behold’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘That time of year thou mayst in me behold’ is one of the most widely anthologised sonnets by William Shakespeare, and is often praised as one of the most successfully constructed, and most moving, of all the Sonnets. Before we proceed to a brief analysis of Sonnet 73, here’s a reminder of the poem.

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 71: ‘No longer mourn for me when I am dead’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘No longer mourn for me when I am dead’ is one of the most widely anthologised sonnets by Shakespeare. In Sonnet 71, the Bard enjoins his beloved, the Fair Youth, not to grieve for him when he dies. Not so much a ‘remember me’ as a ‘forget me’ sentiment. But how sincere is such a wish? This sonnet is actually more layered and complex than it might first appear, so some closer analysis is necessary.

No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it, for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O! if, I say, you look upon this verse,
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
But let your love even with my life decay;
Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone.

First, a brief paraphrase of what Sonnet 71 actually says: ‘Don’t mourn for me, Fair Youth, when I’m dead: as soon as the bell has stopped tolling to announce my departure from the world, stop thinking about me as I leave the horrible world behind to go and dwell with the vile worms in the ground.

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 64: ‘When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced’ is one of the more famous sonnets by Shakespeare, and, like Sonnet 60, has a fairly straightforward sentiment at its heart. Also, like Sonnet 60, it is a meditation on the destructive power of Time, which is personified with a capital T once again.

When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed,
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

We’ve enjoyed analysing these sonnets from the middle stretch of Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence, and Sonnet 64 is another gem. In paraphrase, the meaning of the sonnet can be summarised as follows: ‘When I see time destroy those monuments and buildings which I thought would stand forever, when I watch the tide come in and swallow up the shore, when I observe whole kingdoms change in the way they are governed, all of this destruction has taught me to reflect that time will also take the one I love. Such a thought is like suffering a death, and I cannot help weeping to possess someone whom I know I must, in the end, lose.’

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 60: ‘Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Widely regarded as one of the finest of all the Sonnets, Sonnet 60, beginning ‘Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, / So do our minutes hasten to their end’, is a meditation on mortality, with Shakespeare once again proposing that his poetry about the Fair Youth will secure the young man’s immortality. The language and imagery, which lend themselves to close analysis in particular here, are triumphs.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d,
Crooked eclipses ’gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.