An Analysis of Shakespeares Sonnet 73 Essay example

An Analysis of Shakespeares Sonnet 73 Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare is widely read and studied. But what is Shakespeare trying to say? Though it seems there will not be a simple answer, for a better understanding of Shakespeares Sonnet 73, this essay offers an explication of the sonnet from The Norton Anthology of English Literature: That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou seest the twilight of such day As after sunset fadeth in the west;†¦show more content†¦Since its introduction in the 1530s, nearly every major British and American poet has made use of the form (Sonnet xxi). In Versification, James McAuley defines that the sonnet is, In the strict sense, a fourteen-line poem usually in iambic pentameters. The Italian or petrachan type, consists of an octet, usually rhymed cdecde or in some permutation of these. The English sonnet type consists of three quatrains plus a concluding couplet, rhymed variously, the Shakespearian form being abab cdcd efef gg. In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century use, the term was also loosely applied to any lyric poem, especially a love-poem, as in [John] Donnes (1572-1631) Songs and Sonnets (82). The sonnet, however, is not simply a fourteen-line poem having a prescribed rhyme scheme. Certainly most sonnets are fourteen-line poems, and most sonneteers do confine themselves to prescribed rhyme patterns (Bender and Squier xxii). The theme, in Sonnet 73, is the poets aging. Each quatrain develops an image of lateness, of approaching extinction - of a season, of a day, and of a fire, but they also apply to a life (Abrams et al. 867). The poet compares his age to three images through the quatrains: autumn, the dying of the year (first quatrain); the dying of the fire (third quatrain). The first line draws a picture of himself, in me, and in a certain time, That time of year, of his life (surely, he is old now). We can see that theShow MoreRelatedSonnet 73 : Love, Death, And Immortality Through Words1461 Words   |  6 PagesSonnet 73: Love, Death, and Immortality Through Words Shakespeare’s sonnets portray a multitude of different emotions during different times of the narrator’s life. In Sonnet 73, Shakespeare’s main emotion is sadness because he is aging and will soon no longer be able to write the poetry about the person he is talking to throughout the sonnet. While he has many different kinds of poems with different emotions, his theme of this love for this person comes across throughout many of them. He seems toRead MoreEssay about A Range of Interpretations of Shakespeares Hamlet1289 Words   |  6 PagesHamlets dying words and with his contention that Shakespeare chose, very positively, to provide a multiplicity of meanings at this crucial point (30), I wonder whether his analysis, helpful as it is for an understanding of the text in the study, is equally valid in the theatre. If we were speaking of one of Shakespeares sonnets I should find it much easier to believe in the co-existence of four or five distinct meanings, even if they tend to cancel each other out (27). In performance, however,Read Morethatcher4803 Words   |  20 Pages2. William Shakespeare, Sonnets 1-7 3. John Donne, â€Å"Valediction Forbidding Mourning†, â€Å"The Flea†, â€Å"Hymn to God, My God in my Sickness† 4. George Herbert, â€Å"The Collar†, â€Å"The Altar†, â€Å"Love III† 5. Andrew Marvell, â€Å"To his Coy Mistress† 6. T.S. Eliot, â€Å"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock†, â€Å"Journey of the Magi† 2. 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Therefore, a causal analysis can serve one or more of four main purposes: to entertain, to inform, to speculateRead MoreFigurative Language and the Canterbury Tales13472 Words   |  54 Pagesrhymes that occur at the ends of lines 29. end-stopped line: a line that ends with a natural speech pause, usually marked by punctuation. 30. fixed form: a poem in which the length and pattern are prescribed by previous usage or tradition, such as sonnet, limerick, and villanelle. 31. flashback: a scene in a short story, novel, play, or narrative poem that interrupts the chronological action and provides information about the past. Often a character’s recollections of the past 32. foil: a foil is