Not Marble, Nor Glided Monument (Sonnet 55)

William Shakespeare 

How to Analyze a Shakespearean Sonnet

Writing an essay on a Shakespearean sonnet can be quite a challenge. The following are a few tips to help you start the process:

1. Find the Theme

Although love is the overarching theme of the sonnets, there are three specific underlying themes:

a.       the brevity of life,

b.      the transience of beauty, and

c.       the trappings of desire

The first two of these underlying themes are the focus of the early sonnets addressed to the young man (in particular Sonnets 1-17) where the poet argues that having children to carry on one's beauty is the only way to conquer the ravages of time. In the middle sonnets of the young man sequence the poet tries to immortalize the young man through his own poetry (the most famous examples being Sonnet 18 and Sonnet 55). In the late sonnets of the young man sequence there is a shift to pure love as the solution to mortality (as in Sonnet 116). When choosing a sonnet to analyze it is beneficial to explore the theme as it relates to the sonnets around it.

Sonnet 127 marks a shift to the third theme and the poet's intense sexual affair with a woman known as the dark lady. The mood of the sonnets in this sequence is dark and love as a sickness is a prominent motif (exemplified in Sonnet 147).

2. Examine the Literary Devices

Shakespeare likely did not write his sonnets with a conscious emphasis on literary devices, and early editors of the sonnets paid little attention to such devices (with the exception of metaphor and allusion). However, in the era of postmodern literary theory and close reading, much weight is given to the construction or deconstruction of the sonnets and Shakespeare's use of figures of speech such salliteration, assonance, antithesis, enjambment, metonymy, synecdoche, oxymoron, personification, and internal rhyme.

The Art of the Shakespearean Sonnet

The sonnet is a traditionally rigid poetic form featuring fourteen lines with rhyme, meter, and logical structure. The form was first developed in Italy during the High Middle Ages, with such well-known figures as Dante Alighieri putting it to use. But the most famous sonneteer of that time was Francesco Petrarca, and it is after him that the Italian sonnet got its name.

The Petrarchan sonnet's fourteen lines are divided into an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines), with the sestet responding to some proposition introduced in the octave. The rhyme scheme varied somewhat, but typically featured no more than four or five rhymes, for exampleabbaabba cdecde.

Thomas Wyatt introduced the sonnet form into the English language in the early 16th century. Although Wyatt stuck to Petrarchan conventions, the form soon evolved into a specifically English one, and it was used by a good number of Renaissance poets - including Shakespeare. In fact, the English sonnet is often referred to as the Shakespearean sonnet for the same reason the Italian sonnet is often named after Petrarch. It is also sometimes referred to as the Elizabethan sonnet, after the era during which it took shape.

The Shakespearean sonnet is distinct from the Petrarchan sonnet in a number of ways. First, the octave-sestet division is replaced by a quatrain-couplet division, with three quatrains of four lines each followed by a closing two-line couplet. The rhyme scheme of a traditional Shakespearean sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg, increasing the total number of rhymes to seven. The meter is iambic pentameter, five feet of two syllables each (ten syllables total per line), where each foot is normally an iamb consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one. Finally, the logical structure of a Shakespearean sonnet parallels that of the Petrarchan to a certain extent, in that the third quatrain sometimes introduces a twist on the theme of the preceding two; but it is the distinctive couplet that carries the pop, normally delivering a great overarching message or a deeply insightful thought.

 

Shakespeare's Sonnets Summary

The sonnets are traditionally divided into two major groups: the fair lord sonnets (1-126) and the dark lady sonnets (127-154). The fair lord sonnets explore the narrator's consuming infatuation with a young and beautiful man, while the dark lady sonnets engage his lustful desire for a woman who is not his wife. The narrator is tormented as he struggles to reconcile the uncontrollable urges of his heart with his mind's better judgment, all the while in a desperate race against time.

The sonnets begin with the narrator's petition to the fair lord, exhorting him to preserve his beauty for future generations by passing it on to a child. This theme is developed until sonnet 18, where the narrator abandons it in favor of an alternative plan to eternalize the fair lord's beauty in his verse. But it is not long before the narrator's mellifluous depictions of the fair lord's beauty are replaced with the haunting lament of unrequited love. The narrator grows increasingly enamored with the fair lord, eventually becoming emotionally dependent upon him and plagued by the inability to win his heart. The narrator is further distressed by the incessant passing of time, and he fears the detriment time inevitably will bring to the fair lord's youthful beauty.

The narrator's emotions fluctuate between love and anger, envy and greed. We find poignant examples of the narrator's jealousy in the rival poet sonnets (79-86), where the fair lord's attention has been caught by another. The narrator's fragile psyche collapses in bouts of self-deprecation as he agonizes over the thought of forever losing the object of his affection. In sonnet 87, the narrator bids the fair lord farewell - but his heartache long persists.

The remainder of the fair lord sonnets are characterized by the vicissitudes of the narrator's emotional well-being. After his parting with the fair lord in sonnet 87, the narrator grows introspective, waxing philosophical as he begins to probe the very fabric of love. Throughout these developments we are made privy to the narrator's mounting apprehension that his time is running short. Finally, in sonnet 126, his love matured and yet still beautiful, the narrator points out that the fair lord too will one day meet his doom.

Paraphrase

"Not marble, nor the gilded monuments / Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;"

Statues and monuments will not last as long as this poem;

"But you shall shine more bright in these contents / Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time."

And you will last longer, immortalized in this poem, than the stone statues and monuments, which will fade and become dusty over time.

"When wasteful war shall statues overturn, / And broils root out the work of masonry,"

War and other disturbances will destroy statues and monuments,

"Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn / The living record of your memory."

But poetry, which memorializes you, cannot be destroyed by these means.

"'Gainst death, and all oblivious enmity / Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room"

You shall outlast death and all other forces that seek to destroy things

"Even in the eyes of all posterity / That wear this world out to the ending doom."

Even for future generations.

"So, till the judgment that yourself arise, / You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes."

So you will live in this poem until judgment day.

Summary

Sonnet 55 builds on Horace's theme of poetry outlasting physical monuments to the dead:  "I have built a monument more lasting than bronze / And taller than the regal peak of the pyramids... / I shall never completely die. In Horace's Ode 3.30, it is himself who will be immortalized by his poetry, but in the case of Sonnet 55, Shakespeare seeks to build a figurative monument to his beloved, the fair lord.

However, the fair lord is not described or revealed in anyway in this sonnet; instead, the sonnet just addresses the idea of immortality through verse. The final couplet addresses this problem with the assurance that it doesn't matter, since "You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes." It is enough that the fair lord lives in "lovers' eyes," or the eyes of the poet and presumably everyone else who sees him. The reference to judgment day in lines 12-13 also suggests that perhaps the identity of the fair lord will be revealed then.

This theme of immortality through verse is common in Shakespeare's sonnets. For example, in Sonnet 18, the speaker assures the fair lord that he will not die, "When in eternal lines to time thou growest." Sonnet 19 admits that Time will eventually destroy the fair lord by disfiguring him and killing him, but ends with a challenge: "Yet, do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong, / My love shall in my verse ever live young." Sonnet 65 bemoans that fleeting beauty stands no chance against the ravages of time, but hopes "That in black ink my love may still shine bright."

The ravages of time is a recurring theme in Shakespeare's sonnets; often it is addressed in terms of its unavoidable effect on beauty and youth, specifically that of the fair lord, but here its effects on statues and monuments is the focus. "Wasteful war," "broils," the sword of Mars (the god of war), and "war's quick fire" are seen as the chief causes of the destruction of statues and monuments, in addition to "sluttish time." Here, "sluttish" means lewd and whorish, and characterizes time as apathetic to the orderliness of the world.

Line 13 refers to "the judgment that yourself arise," or judgment day. In religious tradition, judgment day is the point at which all souls, even those that have been dead for a long time (including that of the fair lord) will "arise" to be judged by God. This day is also referred to as "the ending doom" in line 12; "posterity," or future generations, live in the world until that final day when everyone is judged. After that day, there is no further reason for immortalizing anyone in poetry.