Shakespeare’s Sonnets – Page 5 – Interesting Literature

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 49: ‘Against that time, if ever that time come’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Against that time’: these three words begin the first, fifth, and ninth lines of Shakespeare’s 49^th sonnet – each of the poem’s three quatrains, in other words. In this poem, in other words, the Bard considers a dark day in the future when the Fair Youth will realise that he, Shakespeare, is not worthy of his love, and will go off him. The poem deserves some close analysis for its treatment of an all-too-familiar theme: how you cope with loving somebody who you think is just simply too good for you.

Against that time, if ever that time come,
When I shall see thee frown on my defects,
When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,
Called to that audit by advis’d respects;
Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass,
And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye,
When love, converted from the thing it was,
Shall reasons find of settled gravity;
Against that time do I ensconce me here,
Within the knowledge of mine own desert,
And this my hand, against my self uprear,
To guard the lawful reasons on thy part:

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 48: ‘How careful was I when I took my way’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘How careful was I when I took my way’ opens up a series of what Don Paterson calls ‘pessimistic sonnets’. From Sonnet 48 onwards, we’re in for a spate of gloomy meditations on love, as Shakespeare begins to fret over losing the Fair Youth’s affection.

How careful was I when I took my way,
Each trifle under truest bars to thrust,
That to my use it might unused stay
From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust!
But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are,
Most worthy comfort, now my greatest grief,
Thou best of dearest, and mine only care,
Art left the prey of every vulgar thief.
Thee have I not locked up in any chest,
Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art,
Within the gentle closure of my breast,
From whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part;

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 47: ‘Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took’: in Sonnet 47, Shakespeare concludes his pair of sonnets about the ‘war’ between his eye and his heart, that had been introduced in the previous sonnet. In Sonnet 47, the war has ended in a truce, and Shakespeare’s eye and heart now live in ‘league’ with each other, doing good turns for the other. This turnaround is going to require a little closer analysis:

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 46: ‘Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Shakespeare and the number 46 have a curious relationship. The theory that the Bard translated the 46th Psalm in the King James Version of the Bible (because Shakespeare would have been 46 when work on the translation was nearing its completion, and the 46th word of the psalm is … Read more

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 45: ‘The other two, slight air and purging fire’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

As the opening line of this poem, ‘The other two, slight air and purging fire’, makes clear, Sonnet 45 is very much the companion-piece to Sonnet 44, which had pondered Shakespeare’s separation from the Fair Youth by drawing on two of the four classical elements, earth and water. In Sonnet 45, he turns to ‘the other two’, air and fire:

The other two, slight air and purging fire,
Are both with thee, wherever I abide;
The first my thought, the other my desire,
These present-absent with swift motion slide.
For when these quicker elements are gone
In tender embassy of love to thee,
My life, being made of four, with two alone
Sinks down to death, oppressed with melancholy;
Until life’s composition be recured
By those swift messengers return’d from thee,
Who even but now come back again, assured
Of thy fair health, recounting it to me: