The Place 2 Be: Shakespeare's Sonnets

Critique of Sonnet 17

SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS

Theme: Young Man
Content: Request for the subject to have children that will prove to the world how handsome the subject was and verify the poet's verse.

Who will believe my verse in time to come
If it were filled with your most high deserts?
Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts.

"Who will believe my poetry in the future if it described your highest values, when it is really only a tomb which cannot show the true life of you?"

Counterpoint between the mortal, fallible belief of future generations and divine knowledge.

Time to come morphs in to a tomb.

If I could write the beauty of your eyes
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say "This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne'er touched earthly faces."

"If I could truly capture your beauty in my verse then future generations would only say that I am a liar as such beauty in a person is impossible."

Exceptionally generous flattering of the subject's qualities countered by exceptionally modest faith in the poet's abilities at capturing his subject in verse.

Progression of the mortal/divine imagery in heavenly and earthly.

The age of the subject emphasised in earlier sonnets now morphs into the age of future generations.

The Time to come in line 1 morphs into Age to come.

The tomb of Q1 is now echoed in touches and touched.

So should my papers, yellowed with their age,
Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be termed a poet's rage
And stretched metre of an antique song.

"My old verse should be rightfully scorned as falsehoods."

Age now transfers to the poet's verse and rage and is caricatured as old men and antique music.

The tomb of Q1 is now echoed in tongue.

But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice: in it, and in my rhyme.

"But if you had children, people would see that my verse is true as evidenced by the beauty of your child."

Both the subject and poet are immortalised by the subject having children.

The future time to come in the opening line is concluded as the objective in the couplet in an appeal for the subject to think of the future.