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Student Number: 201808903

Word count:

Select three sonnets from Shakespeare’s Sonnets (at least two

of which must be from the list below), and analyse these using

your close reading* skills, paying particular attention to the

relationship between form and meaning and conceits

(extended metaphors) or patterns of imagery (around 600

words on each sonnet). Conclude by identifying similarities or

contrasts between these sonnets which your close reading*

has revealed (around 200 words).

List of sonnets: 5, 12, 20, 29, 30, 49, 55, 60, 73, 87, 94,

106, 129, 130, 144, 154

In this essay I will analyse sonnets 94, 116 and 129 of

Shakespeare’s Sonnets both in their form and content to show

how Shakespeare detached himself from the Renaissance

tradition writing these poems, which due a lot to Italian

poetry, in particular to Petrarch, but, at the same time, voicing

his own ispiration. Firstly, I will briefly introduce

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Shakespeare’s sonnets’ collection, taking into account its main

characteristics and peculiarities. Secondly, I will take into

consideration the three sonnets I have chosen, analysing them

separately to fully grasp the relationship between their form

and meaning. In the end, I will try to discuss the similarities

between these sonnets and, at the same time, to identify the

contrasts that made me choose them.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets is a collection of poems written by

Shakespeare, whose production cannot be explicitly attributed

Sonnet 94 is considered one of the most puzzling poems of

Shakespeare’s collection. It belongs to the group of sonnets

addressed to the figure of the Fair Youth (1-126), set near the

end of a sort of micro-sequence (87-96) that stands out for

the depiction of the Fair Youth as unreliable. Generally, the

sonnet deals with the requirement of moral commitment

bound to the idea that the gift of beauty carries with it an

obligation to live life on the straight and narrow. Specifically, it

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rhymes the attempt to create a hypothetical beloved who

remain free from the blots of immorality previously and

successively presented in this micro-sequence, ending with the

gradual failure of it under the blows of corruption lastly

recognized however.

With regard to the structure, it is a standard sonnet that

respects the poetical structure Shakespeare has employed

throughout his collection, but it presents some relevant

variants: there are initial reversals (lines 7,8 and 14),

disyllabic words functioning as monosyllabic (Power, line 1;

Flower, lines 9 and 11) or trisyllabic (Unmoved, line 4), and

final hexametrical syllables with feminine endings (line 5 and

necessarily line 7). Furthermore, Shakespeare has employed

some rhetorical devices throughout the poem: there are

caesuras, the break in a verse where one phrase ends and the

following phrase begins, above all in the middle and at the end

of the lines of the first quatrain, and repetitions, the simple

repeating of a sound, a word or a theme within a short space

of words, whose purpose is to make the overall pace distinctly

slow.

With regard to the content, it is made up of two main thematic

segments. In the first and second quatrains, the speaker is

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depicting those who behave properly: they should be

“unmoved” and “cold” as stones. Although, the metaphor is

broken up by the following statement: they could be to

“temptation slow”, inserting a movement that clashes with the

implied stillness of previous statements.

In the third quatrain there is a sudden, apparently not so clear

change, because the speaker inserts the metaphor of the

flower: it embodies the fragile and ephemeral beauty of youth

that, immerged in time’s stream, is made vulnerable to

corruption and doomed to death.

The structure adopted conveys perfectly the content, because

the ever-present caesura between lines 8 and 9 is made clear

in the subject’s replacement and in the introduction of the

extended metaphor: the first part describes virtuous men and

what they deserve, whereas the second part uses the

recurring metaphor of the flower to refer indirectly to virtuous

men, implying ultimately the fair young.

The final heroic couplet blends the two key images into an

epigrammatic definition. An epigram is ‘any brief and pithy

verse, particularly if astringent and purporting to point a

moral’, but it can be also applied to ‘any striking sentence in a

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novel, play, poem, or conversation that appears to express a

succinct truth, usually in the form of a generalization’. The first

line of the couplet refers to the first thematic segment, in

which the “sweetest things” deriving from the moral behaviour

of those who are virtuous can turn into the “sourest” because

of the “deeds” inevitably immerged. The second line comes

back to the second thematic segment, in which the probable

allusion to the famous proverb ‘the lily is fair in show but foul

in smell’ on the one hand recalls the opening sentence

because of its proverbial form, closing the sonnet with a

circular movement, on the other hand suggests that youth’s

beauty should be an index of sincere goodness because of the

expectation due to its appearance, providing a key of

interpretation to all the micro-sequence.

The tone of the poem is something unusual in this collection.

Sonnet 94 is the first sonnet neither addressed to nor about a

you but concerned with three different subjects, but it feels

like the speaker is addressing no one. In the first two

quatrains, the subject is the impersonal and almost immobile

“they”, that gradually turns from firm and immune to

corruption and catalyst to motion in others into animate and

attractive. With the insertion of the flower image the

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detachment is reiterated: the image pushes the subject of the

sonnet closer to the beloved of the surrounding sonnets from

whom it has been detached. In the couplet, the subject is the

all-inclusive “things”, that finally completes the identification of

the three different subjects of the poem: the Lillies remind the

reader of the flower as well as of the subject pronoun by their

plurality, whiteness and association with chastity. Regardless

of the final identification, the tone remains impersonal because

the last line is proverbial as the first one: the attempt to

describe a detached, conventionally idealized beloved is failed

because of the entrance of time into the poem that makes him

subject to mortality and corruption.

The sonnet is indirect: there is not direct engagement of the

speaker, who is trying to convey a sort of detachment from

the material he is dealing with in the actual sequence of

sonnets, making it more impelling in its impersonality.

Sonnet 116 is one of the most famous of Shakespeare’s

collection. It belongs to the group of sonnets addressed to the

figure of the Fair Young, set in …

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Generally, it deals with the absolute permanence of love in a

world of change.

Specifically, it rhymes a hypothetical love, beginning with the

description of love as unalterable supported by a careful use of

figures of speech that slowly undermine the given definitions,

ending with a coming back down to earth in the final couplet.

With regard to the structure, it is a standard sonnet with some

pertinent variants to be pointed out: there are a mid-line

reversal (line 2), final hexametrical syllables (line 6 and

necessarily line 8), initial reversals (lines 7, 9 and 11), minor

ionic, that is a rightward movement of the third ictus (line 11),

and a disyllabic word functioning as a monosyllabic (Even, line

12). Furthermore, Shakespeare has employed some rhetorical

devices throughout the poem: there are Enjambments, ie. the

continuing of a sentence from one line of a poem into the start

of the next one, Litotes, ie. the use of a negative statement in

order to emphasize a positive meaning, and Polyptotons, ie.

the repetition of words derived from the same root but with a

different morpho-syntactic function, whose purpose is

With regard to the content, it is made up of two thematic

segments. In the first and second quatrains, the speaker is

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trying to define what love is: it does not alter or retreat, but it

is a fixed mark and a guiding star. The first quatrain opens

with an allusion to the marriage service in the book of

Common Prayer, that is made more problematic using an

enjambement: it is borrowed from the marriage ceremony, but

the language used in the poem moves away from the original

formula, turning it into a sort of ‘heroic oath whose strength

defies the strictures of iambic pentameter and of the end-

stopped line’ (Roessner 1982, p.335). It goes on defining love

by what it doesn’t do through litotes, turning actions into

abstractions: love does not change in a changeable world,

whose meaning could be either that ‘the love between two

people does not change even though they see change all

around them’ or that ‘the love of one lover does not change

with changes in the other lover’(Roessner 1982, p.336) it does

not move in response to the departure of the lover, whose

interpretation reinforces the idea that the first quatrains is

about ‘the feeling of one lover who does not alter or

remove’(Roessner 1982, p.336). The second quatrain defines

love by what it is through two seafaring metaphors, turning

abstractions into concrete references: love is a permanent

mark for ships, whose value resides in being ‘ever-fixed’,

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‘never shaken’ even in tempests, whose implicit reference is

the constant lover who keeps loving his unstable half; it is also

a guiding star for seamen, who can look for it in absence of

other landmarks, whose allusion is once again the constant

lover who keeps chasing the unalterable ideal of love.

In the third quatrain there is a continuation of the thematic

sequence of the previous quatrains, but the recurring caesura

between line 8 and 9 is preserved because the speaker

introduces an extended metaphor: love is not “Time’s fool”,

because it goes beyond “his brief hours and weeks”. The third

quatrain asserts love’s immortality denying love’s mortality,

retrieving the litotes’ strategy of the first quatrain.

It ends with a reference to Doomsday, the Last Judgement,

recalling the opening allusion to the marriage services in the

injunction to the couple.

The structure is used differently here, because the caesura

between lines 8 and 9 is not so clear: the argumentation of

the first two quatrains is almost weakened by the extended

metaphor of the third quatrain, which states the undying

nature of love denying its mortality.

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The final heroic couplet is problematic, because it replaces the

previous description of love with a bombastic provocation,

which addresses the topic but does not come back to it.

The tone is more direct in this sonnet. The use of the object

pronoun “me” reveals the speaker is claiming that the ideal of

love expresses in the poem is embodied in himself, but the

rest of the sonnet is indirect in its description of what love is

and is not. The speaker returns in the final couplet with the

reiteration of the object pronoun “me” and the introduction of

the personal pronoun “I”, which marks the high-sounding

engagement of the speaker as a legitimate writer.

Sonnet 129 belongs to the group of sonnets addressed to the

figure of the Dark Lady (127-152), set in the middle of six

sonnets that stand out for their playful and conventional

nature as well as lack of intensity. Regardless of its position in

the sequence, it can be easily seen as a ‘paradigmatic

introduction’ (Thomas Neely 1977, p.91) to the Dark Lady

section, because it casts ‘a retrospective light back on the two

preceding sonnets as possibly untrustworthy eulogies by a

lust-driven lover’ (Duncan Jones 2007, p.372). Generally, the

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sonnet deals with human desire and its effects on human

mind. Specifically, it rhymes the temptations of sex and the

disappointments that it leads to, beginning with a “rude”

denunciation of lust supported by an “extreme” use of figures

of speech that gradually attenuates throughout the quatrains,

ending with a sarcastically regretful acceptance of the

inevitable, rather than offering a climax, in the final couplet.

With regard to the structure, it is a standard sonnet that with

some relevant variants: there are initial reversals (lines 4 and

9), mid-line reversals (line 9 and 14), Disyllabic words

functioning as a monosyllabic one (Heaven, line 14) and

trisyllabic as disyllabic (Murd’rous, line 3) as well as the

contrary (Despised, line 5). Furthermore, Shakespeare

employs a bunch of figures of speech, making the opening

pace of the poem frenzied: there are Anaphora, ie. the

repetition of the same word at the beginning of a line, whose

purpose in line 2 and 3 is to simplify the reaching of climax

(the reason why lust in action is a ‘waste of shame’) through

another figure, Accumulatio, ie. the gathering of scattered

ideas then listed together; Anadiplosis, ie. the repetition of the

last word of a preceding clause, whose purpose in lines 8 and

9 is to tie the second and the third quatrains together, that are

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characterized by the adoption of the same pattern except for

line 10, in which there is a sudden reversal through another

figure of speech; Polyptotons, ie. the repetition of words

derived from the same root but with a different morpho-

syntactic function, whose purpose in lines 10 and 11 is to

clarify the diachronical dimension of lust in action despite the

surprisingly immobility of its description.

The tone is

With regards to the content, it is made up of two main

thematic segments.

The result is a structure carefully constructed repeating the

same pattern in the same order from line 1 to line 10 as to

better convey ‘the unvarying progress of lust from pursuit to

consummation to aftermaths’ (Thomas Neely 1977, p.91)

Bibliography

Shakespeare, William 2004 [c.1609], Shakespeare’s Sonnets.

ed. Katherine Duncan Jones. London: Arden, 2007.

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Roessner, Jane 1982 ‘The Coherence and the Context of

Shakespeare's Sonnet 116’ in The Journal of English and

Germanic Philology, Vol. 81, No. 3, pp. 331-346.

Thomas Neely, Carol 1977 ‘Detachment and Engagement in

Shakespeare's Sonnets: 94, 116, and 129’ in PMLA, Vol. 92,

No. 1, pp. 83-95.

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