Sonnet 55

Last updated

«
»
Sonnet 55
Sonnet 55.jpg
The first two stanzas of Sonnet 55 in the 1609 Quarto
Rule Segment - Fancy1 - 40px.svg

Q1



Q2



Q3



C

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword, nor war’s quick fire, shall burn
The living record of your memory:
’Gainst death, and all oblivious enmity,
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgement that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

Contents




4



8



12

14

—William Shakespeare [1]

Sonnet 55 is one of the 154 sonnets published in 1609 by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is included in what is referred to as the Fair Youth sequence.

Structure

Sonnet 55 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet contains three quatrains followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the form's typical rhyme scheme, ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The fifth line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:

  ×   /    ×   /    ×     / ×   / ×  /  When wasteful war shall statues overturn, (55.5) 
/ = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus.

Criticism

Sonnet 55 is interpreted as a poem in part about time and immortalization. The poet claims that his poem will outlast palaces and cities, and keep the young man's good qualities alive until the Last Judgement. The sonnet traces the progression of time, from the physical endeavours built by man (monuments, statues, masonry), as well as the primeval notion of warfare depicted through the image of "Mars his sword" and "war's quick fire", to the concept of the Last Judgment. The young man will survive all of these things through the verses of the speaker. [2]

John Crowe Ransom points out that there is a certain self-refuting aspect to the promises of immortality: for all the talk of causing the subject of the poems to live forever, the sonnets keep the young man mostly hidden. The claim that the poems will cause him to live eternally seem odd when the vocabulary used to describe the young man is so vague, with words such as "lovely", "sweet", "beauteous" and "fair". In this poem among the memorable descriptions of ruined monuments the reader only gets a glimpse of the young man in line 10 "pacing forth". [3]

These monuments, statues, and masonry reference both Horace's Odes and Ovid's Metamorphoses . Lars Engle argues that echoing the ancients, as the speaker does when he says "not marble, nor the gilded monuments / Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;" further solidifies the speaker's claim about the longevity of the written word. However, while Horace and Ovid claim the immortality for themselves, the speaker in sonnet 55 bestows it on another. Engle also claims that this is not the first time Shakespeare references the self-aggrandizement of royals and rulers by saying that poetry will outlive them. He frequently mentions his own (political) unimportance, which could lead sonnet 55 to be read as a sort of revenge of the socially humble on their oppressors. [4]

While the first quatrain is referential and full of imagery, in the second quatrain Ernest Fontana focuses on the epithet "sluttish time". The Oxford English Dictionary gives "sluttish" two definitions: 1) dirty, careless, slovenly (which can refer to objects and persons of both sexes) and 2) lewd, morally loose, and whorish. According to Fontana, Shakespeare intended the second meaning, personifying and assigning gender to time, making the difference between the young man sonnets and the dark lady sonnets all the more obvious. Shakespeare had used the word "slut" nearly a year before he wrote sonnet 55 when he wrote Timon of Athens. In the play, Timon associates the word "slut" with "whore" and venereal disease. Associating "sluttish" with venereal disease makes Shakespeare's use of the word "besmeared" more specific. Fontana states: "The effect of time, personified as a whore, on the hypothetical stone statue of the young man, is identified in metaphor with the effect of syphilis on the body—the statue will be besmeared, that is, covered, with metaphoric blains, lesions, and scars." (Female) time destroys whereas the male voice of the sonnet is "generative and vivifying". [5]

Helen Vendler expands on the idea of "sluttish time" by examining how the speaker bestows grandeur on entities when they are connected to the beloved but mocks them and associates them with dirtiness when they're connected with something the speaker hates. She begins by addressing the "grand marble" and "gilded" statues and monuments; these are called this way when the speaker compares them to the verse immortalizing the beloved. However, when compared to "sluttish time" they are "unswept stone besmeared". The same technique occurs in the second quatrain. Battle occurs between mortal monuments of princes, conflict is crude and vulgar, "wasteful war" overturns unelaborated statues and "broils" root out masonry. Later in quatrain war becomes "war's quick fire" and "broils" become "Mars his sword". The war is suddenly grand and the foes are emboldened. The blatant contempt with which the speaker regards anything not having to do with the young man, or anything that works against the young man's immortality, raises the adoration of the young man by contrast alone.

Like the other critics, Vendler recognizes the theme of time in this sonnet. She expands on this by arguing that the sonnet revolves around the keyword "live". In quatrain 1, the focus is the word "outlive". In quatrain 2 it's "living"; in quatrain 3 "oblivious", and the couplet focuses on the word "live" itself. However, this raises the question of whether the young man actually continues to live bodily or if only his memory remains. There are references to being alive physically with active phrases like "you shall shine in these contents" and "'gainst death and all oblivious enmity / shall you pace forth", and also to living in memory: "the living record of your memory", and "your praise shall…find room…in the eyes of all posterity". Vendler argues that this question is answered by the couplet when it assigns "real" living to the day of the Last Judgment: "So till the judgment that your self arise / you live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes." [6]

A possible contemporary reference

In the Folger Library, Robert Evans came across an epitaph that someone had written to the memory of Shakespeare. Evans could not find the verse recorded in various reference books. The epitaph was found on the last end page of a folio in the Folger collection. It is written in brown ink, in a secretary hand, which was a common 17th Century style of handwriting. It was written between two other epitaphs that are well known (including the one in the Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon where Shakespeare is buried). If it is authentic, it can be seen as another example indicating Shakespeare's regard among his contemporaries:

Heere Shakespeare lyes whome none but Death could Shake
and heere shall ly till judgement all awake;
when the last trumpet doth unclose his eyes
the wittiest poet in the world shall rise.

The lines of the verse echo lines from sonnet 55, which the unknown author may have been recalling. (“So, till the judgement that yourself arise, / You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.”) [7]

Interpretations

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 1</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 1 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a procreation sonnet within the Fair Youth sequence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 60</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 60 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 beloved.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 73</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 73, one of the most famous of William Shakespeare's 154 sonnets, focuses on the theme of old age. The sonnet addresses the Fair Youth. Each of the three quatrains contains a metaphor: Autumn, the passing of a day, and the dying out of a fire. Each metaphor proposes a way the young man may see the poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 30</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 30 is one of the 154 sonnets written by the English poet and playwright William Shakespeare. It was published in the Quarto in 1609. It is also part of the Fair Youth portion of the Shakespeare Sonnet collection where he writes about his affection for an unknown young man. While it is not known exactly when Sonnet 30 was written, most scholars agree that it was written between 1595 and 1600. It is written in Shakespearean form, comprising fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, divided into three quatrains and a couplet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 12</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 12 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a procreation sonnet within the Fair Youth sequence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 15</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 15 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It forms a diptych with Sonnet 16, as Sonnet 16 starts with "But...", and is thus fully part of the procreation sonnets, even though it does not contain an encouragement to procreate. The sonnet is within the Fair Youth sequence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 32</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 32 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 writer is reflecting on a future in which the young man will probably outlive him. The writer takes a melancholy tone, telling the young man to remember the writer not because of the strength of the sonnets, but because the love that has been shown to the young man far surpasses any love shown by another poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 35</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare's Sonnet 35 is part of the Fair Youth sequence, commonly agreed to be addressed to a young man; more narrowly, it is part of a sequence running from 33 to 42, in which the speaker considers a sin committed against him by the young man, which the speaker struggles to forgive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 116</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare's sonnet 116 was first published in 1609. Its structure and form are a typical example of the Shakespearean sonnet.

Shakespeare's Sonnet 53, presumably addressed to the same young man as the other sonnets in the first part of the sequence, raises some of the most common themes of the sonnet: the sublime beauty of the beloved, the weight of tradition, and the nature and extent of art's power. As in Sonnet 20, the beloved's beauty is compared to both a man's (Adonis) and a woman's (Helen).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 64</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 64 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.

Sonnet 65 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 71</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 71 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. It focuses on the speaker's aging and impending death in relation to his young lover.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 133</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 133 is a poem in sonnet form written by William Shakespeare, first published in 1609 in Shakespeare's sonnets.

Sonnet 125 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 78</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 78 is one of 154 sonnets published by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare in 1609. It is one of the Fair Youth sequence, and the first of the mini-sequence known as the Rival Poet sonnets, thought to be composed some time from 1598 to 1600.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 88</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 88 is one of 154 sonnets published in 1609 by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's one of the Fair Youth 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 84</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 84 is one of 154 sonnets published by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare in 1609. It's part of the Fair Youth sequence, and the seventh sonnet of the Rival Poet group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet 87</span> Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 87 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 sometimes included as the last sonnet in the Rival Poet group.

References

  1. Shakespeare, William. Duncan-Jones, Katherine. Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Bloomsbury Arden 2010. ISBN   9781408017975. p. 221
  2. Kaula, David. "In War With Time: Temporal Perspectives in Shakespeare's Sonnets". SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900. Vol. 3, No. 1, The English Renaissance (Winter, 1963), pp. 45-57. JSTOR Database
  3. Ransom, John Crowe. The World’s Body. Charles Scribner's Son, New York, 1938. p. 287 ISBN   9780807101285
  4. Engle, Lars. "Afloat in Thick Deeps: Shakespeare's Sonnets on Certainty". PMLA, Vol. 104, No. 5 (Oct., 1989), pp. 832-843. JSTOR Database
  5. Fontana, E. "Shakespeare's Sonnet 55." The Explicator v. 45 (Spring 1987) p. 6-8. EBSCO Host Database
  6. Vendler, Helen. The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. Print.
  7. Evans, Robert. "Whome None but Death Could Shake: An Unreported Epitaph on Shakespeare". Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 1, (Spring, 1988) p. 60. JSTOR Database

Further reading

First edition and facsimile
Variorum editions
Modern critical editions