Wednesday, June 10, 2015

What is an analysis of Shakespeare's Sonnet 63?

Sonnet 63 is about a favorite theme for sonneteers, that
of poetry immortalizing beauty and love. It begins with the poet saying that in
preparation for the time when "my love shall be" as old as he himself is at the time of
writing, he shall immortalize him "in these black lines" and keep "my lover's life"
still "green," or youthful, with "sweet love's
beauty."


Sonnet 63 is in iambic
pentameter
with two voltas, or change in topic within
the subject of the sonnet. The first 12 lines are 3 quatrains with
a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef. The last two lines are an ending
rhyming couplet with the rhyme scheme gg. This
is what came to be the standard English, or Shakespearean, sonnet
form
. It is not in the original Petrarchan sonnet form. The
voltas (i.e., thought turns) are at lines 5 and 9. At 5, he turns
from Time to the journey that will cause his love's kingly "beauties" to vanish "out of
sight" and steal the youthful "treasure of his spring."


At
9, he turns to protesting "Against confounding age's cruel knife," asserting his love
shall be "never cut from memory." The couplet explains that "His beauty shall in these
black lines be seen, / ... / and he in them still
green."



That
[Age] shall never cut from memory
My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's
life:


[Couplet]
His beauty shall in these black
lines be seen,
And they shall live, and he in them still
green.


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