Sonnet 77

Last updated

«
»
Sonnet 77
Sonnet 77 1609.jpg
The first two lines of Sonnet 77 in the 1609 Quarto
Rule Segment - Fancy1 - 40px.svg

Q1



Q2



Q3



C

Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,
Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste,
The vacant leaves thy mind’s imprint will bear,
And of this book, this learning mayst thou taste:
The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show
Of mouthed graves will give thee memory;
Thou by thy dial’s shady stealth mayst know
Time’s thievish progress to eternity;
Look, what thy memory cannot contain,
Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find
Those children nursed, delivered from thy brain,
To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.
These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,
Shall profit thee, and much enrich thy book.

Contents




4



8



12

14

—William Shakespeare [1]

Shakespeare's 77th sonnet is the half-way point of the book of 154 sonnets. The poet here presents the idea of the young man taking on the role of poet and writing about himself. This sonnet makes use of the rhetorical device termed correlatio, which involves a listing and correlating of significant objects, and which was perhaps overused in English sonnets. The objects here are a mirror, a time piece and a notebook, each representing a way towards self-improvement for the young man as poet. [2] [3]

Paraphrase

When you look in your mirror, you will see how you are aging. Your timepiece will show you how your minutes are being wasted. This book will allow you to record the impressions of your mind, and these impressions will themselves teach you. The lines in your face that your mirror shows you will remind you of the open mouths of fresh graves. The hands of the dial will truly teach you how time thievishly keeps leading towards eternity. What your memory cannot keep, you should write down, and when you return to them you will find that they are like well-nursed children born of your brain, and you will meet them again afresh—like new friends. The oftener you do these duties – observing, contemplating, writing − the more "your book" will profit.

Structure

Sonnet 77 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet contains three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, and is composed in iambic pentameter lines, a type of poetic metre in which each line as five feet, each foot has two syllables, and each syllable is accented weak/strong. Most of the lines are regular iambic pentameter including the first:

  ×    /    ×   /    ×    /   ×    /   ×   /  Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear 
/ = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus.

Source and analysis

The poem begins with the act of looking in a mirror, and the act of noticing the passage of time – which operate exactly as a memento mori: the medieval tradition of contemplating one's own mortality. The poem turns from that and ends with a model of creative productivity through observation, contemplation and writing — in a collaboration of the poet's offices and the mind's imprint on the young man. [4]

George Steevens and Edmond Malone consider the poem may be referring to the gift of a blank-book or book of tablets, perhaps given to the young man. Edward Dowden hypothesized that the poem relates to the Rival Poet: knowing that he has lost favor, the speaker makes a present of this blank book to the youth, who will now have to fill it himself, since the speaker has fallen silent.

It has been suggested that the mirror and dial referred to may be devices represented on the cover of the book – assuming the book is an actual object. Alternately, as Rolfe hypothesized, they might have been gifts enclosed with the book. Henry Charles Beeching discounts any clear biographical clue in the poem, arguing that it is so unrelated to those next it in the sequence that it must be read apart.

Sonnet 77, together with the sonnet that precedes it, and the sonnet that follows it form a group, in which the poet's thoughts turn to the act of writing. In sonnet 76 the poet fears his writing may be old-fashioned; in sonnet 77 he demonstrates both the problem and his fears by having sonnet 77 take the form of the much maligned rhetorical device correlatio, which was perhaps over-used by Philip Sidney in the 1590s, then later in that decade mocked by Sir John Davies in his Gullinge Sonnets. Finally in sonnet 78 the poet has found a solution to the problem and the right way forward. [5]

The quarto's first line uses a common variant spelling for wear: were. This spelling may suggest: how thy beauties “used to be”. But Booth considers that potential second meaning to be not useful or meaningful here. [6]

The three objects – the glass, the dial, and the book – may be purely metaphorical, not references to actual objects, but metaphors for observation, time and the act of writing.

Sonnet 77 is the midpoint in the sequence of 154 sonnets. The fact that it is about a mirror may be relevant to its placing. Edmund Spenser mentions mirrors at the midpoint of his sequence, Amoretti, Sonnet 45 of 89: "Leaue lady in your glasse of christall clene, / Your goodly selfe for euermore to vew". [7]

The original quarto's "blacks" in line 10 is usually emended to "blanks", following Alexander Dyce. Some critics have defended "blacks" as referring to printer's type, or to slate notebooks. If it refers to printers type it allows the reference to the quarto itself as a gift to the young man.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 22</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 22 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare, and is a part of the Fair Youth sequence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 27</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 27 is one of 154 sonnets published by William Shakespeare in a quarto titled Shakespeare's Sonnets in 1609. It is a part of the Fair Youth group of sonnets, and the first in a group of five sonnets that portray the poet in solitude and meditating from a distance on the young man. A theme of the first two of the group regards the night and restlessness, which is a motif also found in the sonnets of Petrarch.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 37</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare's Sonnet 37 returns to a number of themes sounded in the first 25 of the cycle, such as the effects of age and recuperation from age, and the blurred boundaries between lover and beloved. However, the tone is more complex than in the earlier poems: after the betrayal treated in Sonnets 34–36, the speaker does not return to a simple celebration.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 39</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 39 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 43</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare's Sonnet 43 employs antithesis and paradox to highlight the speaker's yearning for his beloved and sadness in their absence, and confusion about the situation described in the previous three sonnets. Sonnet 27 similarly deals with night, sleep, and dreams.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 56</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 56 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. The exact date of its composition is unknown, it is thought that the Fair Youth sequence was written in the first half of the 1590s and was published with the rest of the sonnets in the 1609 Quarto.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 93</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 93 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 63</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 63 is one of 154 sonnets published in 1609 by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is one of the Fair Youth sequence. Contrary to most of the other poems in the Fair Youth sequence, in Sonnets 63 to 68 there is no explicit addressee, and the second person pronoun is not used anywhere in sonnets 63 to 68.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 91</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 91 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 141</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 141 is the informal name given to the 141st of William Shakespeare's 154 sonnets. The theme of the sonnet is the discrepancy between the poet's physical senses and wits (intellect) on the one hand and his heart on the other. The "five wits" that are mentioned refer to the mental faculties of common sense, imagination, fantasy, instinct, and memory. The sonnet is one of several in which the poet's heart is infatuated despite what his eyes can see.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 99</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 99 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. The sonnet is generally grouped with the preceding two in the sequence, with which it shares a dominant trope and image set: the beloved is described in terms of, and judged superior to, nature and its beauties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 79</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 79 is one of 154 sonnets published by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare in 1609. It is part of the Fair Youth sequence, and the second sonnet of the Rival Poet sequence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 80</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 80 is one of 154 sonnets published by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare in 1609. It is part of the Fair Youth sequence, and the third sonnet of the Rival Poet sequence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 81</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 81 is one of 154 sonnets written by William Shakespeare, and published in a quarto titled Shakespeare's Sonnets in 1609. It is a part of the Fair Youth series of sonnets, and the fourth sonnet of the Rival Poet series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 82</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 82 is one of 154 sonnets published by William Shakespeare in a quarto titled Shakespeare's Sonnets in 1609. It is a part of the Fair Youth series of sonnets, and the fifth sonnet of the Rival Poet group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 83</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 83 is one of 154 sonnets published by William Shakespeare in a quarto titled Shakespeare's Sonnets in 1609. It is a part of the Fair Youth group of sonnets, and the sixth sonnet of the Rival Poet group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 86</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 86 is one of 154 sonnets first published by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare in the Quarto of 1609. It is the final poem of the Rival Poet group of the Fair Youth sonnets in which Shakespeare writes about an unnamed young man and a rival poet competing for the youth's favor. Though the exact date of its composition is unknown, it has been suggested that the Rival Poet series may have been written between 1598 and 1600.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 95</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 95 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 104</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 104 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 122</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 122 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare, and first published in 1609. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. Although the relationship started exuberantly in Sonnet 18 by now it has given way to an almost defensive tone. The poet justifies giving away or losing a notebook ("tables") given him by the youth to record shared events by saying that his memories of them are stronger.

References

  1. Shakespeare, William. Duncan-Jones, Katherine. Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Bloomsbury Arden 2010. p. 265 ISBN   9781408017975.
  2. Kalax, Rayna. Frame, Glass, Verse: The Technology of Poetic Invention in the English Renaissance. Cornell University Press, 2007. ISBN   9780801445415 p. 128
  3. Shakespeare, William. Duncan-Jones, Katherine. Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Bloomsbury Arden 2010. p. 264 ISBN   9781408017975.
  4. Kalas, Rayna. Frame, Glass, Verse: The Technology of Poetic Invention in the English Renaissance. Cornell University Press, 2007. p. 128 ISBN   9780801445415
  5. Kalas, Rayna. Frame, Glass, Verse: The Technology of Poetic Invention in the English Renaissance. Cornell University Press, 2007. p. 128 ISBN   9780801445415
  6. Booth, Stephen. Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Yale University Press. 2000. ISBN   9780300085068 p. 266
  7. Larsen, Kenneth J. "Structure" in Essays on Shakespeare's Sonnets.

Further reading

First edition and facsimile
Variorum editions
Modern critical editions