Love is treated in this sonnet, but rather than being dominant, it takes a secondary role, the poet’s troubles overshadowing it.
Indeed most of the sonnet seems to be concentrating on problems and does not consider love as a solution. One of the elements that show this is the amount of lines consecrated for love. In the fourteen-line sonnet only the two last are consecrated to the theme of love. Also, when the poet finally mentions it, he only speaks of the other person’s love for him, saying “thy love,” and does not seem to reciprocate. There is almost coldness in the way love is treated.
The poem is indeed dominated not by love but by the thought of death. He speaks of it directly in the lines 8 and 11, but its power in opposition to the power of love is also highlighted in the rimes. Indeed, Shakespeare thus associates terms designating pleasant and comfortable things to elements reminding one of death, like for example in lines 2 and 4 with “hang” and “sang,” in lines 6 and 8 with “[the] sunset […] in the west” and “Death’s second self […] in rest” and finally in lines 9 and 11, associating the warmth of “fire” with the term “expire.” Thus the theme of death essentially rules the sonnet.
I agree with the fact that Death is, without a doubt, the central theme of this sonnet. Even so, Death pushes and nudges out Love to take center stage in this work. In fact, like the other sonnet in this study, Death is the main theme and Love is seen as a solution--if not a temporary one.
ReplyDeleteOne important thing I noticed about the theme, however, is the style in which Death is portrayed. Indeed, Death in Keats' poem, for example, is seen as something that will take him away from his work, his fame, and other things that he holds dear to himself. Here, in Sonnet # 73, Death is seen not as something that threatens directly the author, as if he was in the poet's face. Instead, Death is seen as something far away in space and time, something that is distanced from the author. According to Shakespeare, this anxiety is much worse than staring at Death's face, as Troy has done (at least in his stories).
One can see Death as something coming from a considerable distance or over the horizon thanks to several elements that creates distance between the author and the oncoming phenomenon. For example, the adverb "when" precises that a meeting with Death will happen only in the future. Nonetheless, what is described here is more of an immediate future as Shakespeare can imagine a time when "yellow leaves do hang." In addition, the author mentions a "sunset" that "fadeth in the west." This image can be interpreted as a distance that exists between Death and his intended target, despite the presence of the conjunction "as" that can suggest the immediacy of this encounter. On the other hand, this is overshadowed by the image of "Death's second self" that offers the idea that this is not yet the poet's time to leave the Earth with Death; instead, he is visited by his "second-self" as a means of taunting and playing around in the goal of scaring him. We can see that this attempt is successful as Shakespeare decides to write a sonnet about this feeling and anxiety of Death. Finally, in the rhyming couplet, Shakespeare calls upon his lover to stay with him to calm down his anxiety and take his mind off of this whole story as he begins to believe that Death is closer than he actually is. He believes that he "must leave ere long."
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteLea, I am not sure I can agree with you when you say that love does not seem reciprocate. I agree that his main theme in this poem was death and so love does not have much dominance. However, I think that in this case, the author knows he will be alright because he knows that he has love. Here, love is meant to comfort the poet, it makes him think that although he has lost his youth and is about to die, he still has something he can believe in. At the end of the poem, he is saying that he the one he loves will love him more (“which make thou love more strong” on line 13) because his time with that person is limited (“which thou must leave ere long" on line 14).
ReplyDeleteTo relate this poem to a general view, I could add that love for Shakespeare has different uses. In the Sonnet #29, love is not used to comfort the poet on his deathbed, but in his daily life. He mentions love after enumerating all the bad things in his life, such as his “outcast state” (l.2), and all that he wish he could have (“Wishing me like to one more rich in hope” on line 5), but after the volta with the “yet” (l.9), he realizes that the love he has already gives him so much that he would even give up the life of kings for it. What I am trying to say here is that love is a solution to many of Shakespeare’s problems thought his life.