A Shakespearean Sonnet
The great Shakespeare has given us a galaxy of 154 sonnets.
And these sonnets have provoked various amazing criticisms and interpretations.
These sonnets are greatly autobiographical and psychological. They are no
record of the external events of the
poet’s life or of the different experiences that he underwent as a dramatist,
an actor, a poet ,or as a social figure. They are by common consent a record of
the poet’s private thoughts , meditations , conflicts , his friendship with the
Earl of Southamptom and his love for the
dark lady Mary Fitton and also the problems in these relationships.
The sonnets have been roughly divided into two groups – the sonnets from 1 to 126 and the sonnets from 127 to 152 . A lot of ink has been spilled the identify the persons addressed in these sonnets. But the general agreement is that the sonnets of the first groups (1-126) have been addressed to the Earl of Southampton and the sonnets of the second group (127-152) to the dark lady Mary Fitton, a highly honorable lady of the time. The last two sonnets (153-154) are a class by themselves. They celebrate the invincible power of the Greek god of love, Cupid. They are related neither to the first nor to the second group of sonnets.
In the sonnet no. 18 beginning with the line ‘Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day ? Shakespeare has greatly glorified and thus idealized the beauty of the friend, the Earl of Southampton. The sonnet is his glowing tribute to the rare beauty of his friend. The poet here compares the beauty of his friend to the beauty of a summer day. But soon it occurs to him that the beauty of summer is variable and transient. Rough or violent winds cause a great damage to the sweet and lovely buds of May. In fact ,every beautiful thing in nature loses its charm and beauty with the passage of time but his friend’s beauty is everlasting. It would never fade away. Death would also be powerless on his friend’s beauty because his beauty has been preserved and immortalized in this and other sonnets the poet has written as a profound homage to him.
Needful to mention here that there is an interesting dramatic thought division in the sonnets of Shakespeare. And it generally takes place with the 9th line. The first eight lines introduce an idea and develop it. But the last six lines bring the contradictory idea introduced in the 9th line to a satisfactory conclusion. In the first eight lines of the sonnet ‘Shall I Compare Thee to A Summer’s Day?’ (18)’ the poet dwells upon the fact that the beauty of everything in the world is taken away by chance and the changing course of nature. The 9th line gives a dramatic twist ‘But thy eternal summer shall not fade’ and the remaining lines dilate upon this idea of eternity and immortality of his friend’s beauty. The couplet conveys a massage in an epigrammatic style. It says , as long as human beings live and have eyes to see, they’ll read the sonnets of Shakespeare and his friend’s beauty will remain ever fresh in their memory . Thus , the sonnet is characterized by a beautiful harmony of thought and structure.
In fine , we can say that in his sonnet, Shakespeare expresses a number of intense feelings and
emotions firstly his profound admiration for his friend’s charm and beauty ,
secondly his melancholy feeling at the transitoriness of that beauty because of
the destructive influence of time and fate and finally his feeling of
conviction that the beauty of his friend will be preserved and immortalized
through this and other sonnets he has written glorifying his friend’s beauty.
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