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Seminararbeit
Literaturwissenschaft

Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz - KFU

2010

Selina K. ©
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William Shakespeare’s Sonnet No. 12


Seminar Paper:

Literary Studies I


Table of contents


1.    Introduction page 3

2.    Sonnet page 4

3.    Lyric Speech Situation page 5

4.    Theme page 6

5.    General Structure page 6

6.    Rhythm and Metre page 6-7

7.    Rhyme and Other Sound Patterns page 7

8.    Rhetorical Figures on the Semantic Level page 8-9

9.    Conclusion page 9-10

10.References page 11


1.   Introduction


“To be or not to be, that is the question” is a very famous quotation from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, one of his most popular dramas. But what many people do not know is that Shakespeare wrote much more than “Romeo and Juliet”, “Hamlet” and “Macbeth”, he also wrote 154 lyric poems, which are nowadays known as the Shakespearean English sonnets.
He wrote them during the years while the theaters had to stay closed because of a plague epidemic.

Sonnets 1-126 are addressed to a “young man” (“Mr. W. H.”), sonnets 127-152 are addressed to a “dark lady” and the last ones 153-154 are addressed to a “rival poet”. We cannot name those persons who are addressed by Shakespeare’s sonnets, we only know a little about their characteristics and thus many speculations about Shakespeare’s life have resulted from the mysterious addressees in his sonnets.

It looks as if Shakespeare wanted to keep this as a secret.
However, the first 17 sonnets are called the procreation sonnets. In these sonnets, the lyric “I” advises the lyric “thou” (the young man in this case) to marry and breed children in order to overcome mortality, as will be seen later on in the paper.1

To sum up, William Shakespeare wrote in total 38 dramas, two erotic narrative poems and a sonnet cycle of 154 poems (titled SHAKESPEARE'S Sonnets Never before printed, including the narrative poem “A Lover's Complaints”).2

There follows an analysis of Shakespeare’s sonnet 12. I want to show in my paper how the poet structures the sonnet and which poetic devices he employs to represent the theme of beauty and the effects of time.


1 “William Shakespeare Biography.“ [Online]. AbsoluteShakespeare.com. [2010, August 26].

2 cf: Nunez, Jardena (1998). “Short Biography.” Shakespeare. [Online] [2010, August, 26]


Sonnet No. 12 by William Shakespeare


1. When I do count the clock that tells the time,

2. And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;

3. When I behold the violet past prime,

4. And sable curls all silver’d o’er with white;

5. When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,

6. Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,

7. And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves

8. Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard;

9. Then of thy beauty do I question make

10. That thou among the wastes of time must go,

11. Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake,

12. And die as fast as they see others grow;

13. And nothing ‛gainst Time’s scythe can make defence

14. Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.


2.   Lyric Speech Situation


Implicit or Explicit Subjectivity?
Shakespeare’s sonnet No. 12 typically has a lyric “I” with explicit subjectivity. But who is the speaker? We cannot really answer this question; it could be Shakespeare himself or an adopted lyric persona.
Sonnets No. 1-126 are addressed to a “young man” who is addressed through the lyric “thou” with explicit subjectivity.

There are some speculations who that young man could have been. It probably was a man called “Southampton” but this is not entirely clear. 3
The lyric “thou” in sonnet 12 appears from the 9th line onwards. In lines 1-8 there is only a presence of the lyric “I”. The focus here is on the lyric “I’s” reflection of beauty or transitoriness in general.
I would interpret that as a subjective perception or opinion of the speaker, e.g. “[…] When I behold the violet past prime, And sable curls all silver’d o’er with white; […] Then of thy beauty do I question make […]”.

The lyric “I” first tells how he sees that time passes by and tells the lyric “thou” afterwards that his time passes by as well, even if he might not recognize this at the time (while he is still young).
In my point of view the speaker is much older and wiser than the addressee and wants to give him advice for his life.

Line 14th: “[…] Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.”
The person mentioned in the 3rd Person Singular is death, who takes the lyric “thou” away like every live matter.


3 cf. Posener, Alan (1995/2007). William Shakespeare. 2. Auflage. Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag. 82-86.

3.   Theme


This sonnet is one of Shakespeare’s so called “procreation sonnets”. The speaker first goes through images of death and mortality and at the turn (line 9) he tells the addressee that he has to get along with the run of the events. The only way he can fight time is to father descendants.4

A Shakespearean/English sonnet traditionally consists of 14 iambic pentameters linked by a specific rhyme scheme. It falls into three quatrains (stanzas of four lines) ending with a concluding heroic couplet (stanza of two lines) at the end.5
The rhyme scheme is alternating:

First quatrain: a b a b
Second quatrain: c d c d
Third quatrain: e f e f
Couplet (Turn): g g

As in all Shakespearean sonnets the quatrains assume an important role, the first two quatrains “begin with “when .” describing a situation, followed by “then…” in the third quatrain pointing out a result which is concluded by an solution in the concluding couplet.


5.   Rhythm and Metre

As already mentioned the metre of sonnet No. 12 is an iambic pentameter. That means that each line consists of 5 syllables, always an unstressed one followed by a stressed one. 6

4 cf. “Some Introductory Notes To The Sonnets.“ [Online]. Oxquarry Books Ltd. [2010, August 26].
5 “Sonnet”. [Online]. Wikipedia the free encyclopedia. . [2010, August 28].
6 Nünning, Vera und Ansgar (2009). An Introduction to the Study of English and American Literature. Stuttgart: Klett Lerntraining. 58-59.

There are some cuts in the harmony of the iambic pentameter. We can, for instance, find double stresses in line 2 (“And see the braveday sunk in hideous night”), 13 and 14. A double stress is a deviation and means that there is one stressed syllable directly followed by another stressed one. A double stress is often used to draw attention to something of extraordinary importance.
In lines 13 and 14 the passage seems to affect the lyric “I” personally, he stresses “time’s scythe” and “save breed”.

Line 13 relates to the unavoidable death and line 14 strongly emphasizes that he should breed descendants to stay alive through his children and his children’s children. And finally at the end there is another stressing as again the death of his friend (the young man) is mentioned.



The rhyme scheme of the three quatrains of this sonnet is the alternate rhyme: abab, cdcd, efef, gg. That means that every other line rhymes. In sonnet 12 every line has an end-rhyme (rhyme between stressed final vowels in lines of verse) and most lines are perfect rhymes (e.g. line 1 and 3: “prime-time”). There is one deviation of this rhyme scheme in lines 7 and 9, namely a historical rhyme.7
Furthermore there are numerous alliterations, e.g.: “When I do count the clock that tells the time” in line 1 or in line 8 “Borne on the beare with white and bristly beard”.

In addition to the alliteration, Shakespeare also uses internal rhymes as in line 8: “Borne on the beare with white and bristly beard” (is also the ending of the metaphor of the whole quatrain), such as in line 5: “When lofty trees I see barren of leaves”.


7.   Rhetorical Figures on the Semantic Level


Sonnet 12 starts with a metonymy in the phrase: “the clock that tells the time”, which characteizes the passing time. In line two we can find two anthropomorphizing metaphors: “the brave day sunk in hideous night”, where brave day and hideous night symbolically refer to life and death.
In the next line the word “violet” is used for the flower, not the color.

In the whole phrase: “the violet past prime”, the violet is a symbol for the spring, which is now over or went by so fast.
The following line even emphasizes the image of the fast passing time: “sable curls, all silver’d o’er with white”.
In line 5, second quatrain, Shakespeare uses a metaphor to signal the process of ageing: “trees barren of leaves”. The image implies he process of human ageing, which includes the loss of hair or wrinkled skin.

He affirms the beauty of the lyric “thou” but tells him at the same time that he will age and die as everything else does. Furthermore the lyric “I” claims that the beauty and sweetness give their qualities up and wither, while other beauties will appear and grow, so that is the way of life. All the metaphors in the poem are standing for the young man. In the first quatrain the young man is compared to a beautiful, blooming violet.

However, the flower's beauty is short-lived and the man's “sable curls” will sooner or later turn silver and white.

Finally in the heroic couplet something interesting happens. Shakespeare dramatizes the image of ageing and death and uses the allegory “time’s scythe” to create the image of death as a person (Grim Reaper: a skeletal figure, clothed in black, always carrying a scythe and an hourglass)9.

It seems as if the speaker wants to cause panic and afterwards he urges the addressee to overcome death, through the one and only way, by breeding children. It looks as if the lyric “thou” does not realize that his beauty and youth are transitory and because of that the lyric “I” feels obliged to remind him of this process himself.

Or maybe the lyric “I” (the older and wiser one of the two lyric personas) cautions the addressee not to forsake his beauty by not taking good enough care of himself.
This conclusion is typical for Shakespeare’s procreation sonnets (sonnet 1-17). The only way to overcome mortality can always only be reached trough marriage and fatherhood.10



Let me in conclusion, sum up the basic argumentative structure of the sonnet: in lines 1-4 Shakespeare expresses the fast change of time very strongly. In every line he refers to another kind of passing time, hierarchically organized. In the first it is the hour (the clock that tells the time), followed by the daytime that passes by (brave day sunk in hideous night).

The third line refers to the seasons of a year, in this case it is springtime (the violet past prime) and finally it comes to lifetime (curls all silver’s o’er with white).
In the second quatrain he gives examples for signs of the passing of time in nature (lofty trees-barren of leaves, summers green, heat did canopy the herd…). Afterwards in the third quatrain he finally refers to human existence.

Sonnet 12 is one of the poet’s most famous sonnets with a very fine and sophisticated argumentative structure.
At first sight I did actually not see that this poem is all about mortality and transience, because of its wording.

10Posener, Alan (1995/2007). William Shakespeare. 2. Auflage. Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag.

The word death is not explicitly mentioned until the last line of the third quatrain.Shakespeare knows how to bring emotion into a poem, using double stressing, rhyme and phrases such as “silver'd o'er with white”.
He skillfully uses images of nature to present a certain setting and the connected feelings, but mostly to prepare the addressee for his main argument.


11 Mabillard, Amanda. (2000, Aug. 20). “Sonnet 12” Shakespeare Online. [Online] [2010, August 30]

References:


“William Shakespeare Biography.“ [Online]. AbsoluteShakespeare.com. [2010, August 26].

Nunez, Jardena (1998). “Short Biography.” Shakespeare. [Online] [2010, August, 26]

Posener, Alan (1995/2007). William Shakespeare. 2. Auflage. Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag. 82-86.

“Some Introductory Notes To The Sonnets.“ [Online]. Oxquarry Books Ltd. [2010, August 26].

“Sonnet”. [Online]. Wikipedia the free encyclopedia. . [2010, August 28].

Nünning, Vera und Ansgar (2009). An Introduction to the Study of English and American Literature.Stuttgart: Klett Lerntraining. 58-59.

Posener, Alan (1995/2007). William Shakespeare. 2. Auflage. Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag.

“Death Personification” [Online]. Wikipedia free encyclopedia. [2010, July 28].

Posener, Alan (1995/2007). William Shakespeare. 2. Auflage. Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag.

Mabillard, Amanda. (2000, Aug. 20). “Sonnet 12” Shakespeare Online. [Online] [2010, August 30]



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