Theme: Transience of Nobility
Content: A superb poem dismissing the transience and shallowness of fame and nobility which fails to compare with the simplicity of his love for his subject.
Let those who
are in favour
with their stars
Of
public honour and proud titles boast,
Whilst I, whom fortune
of such triumph
bars,
Unlooked-for
joy in that I honour most.
- Paradox of honour between those who have public honour and the Poet who has honour in loving his subject.
- This is an f sonnet, with all key words that describe those whom he does not associate himself with starting with f or its phonetic equivalent ph.
- This sonnet also makes prominent use of the word for: favour...fortune...Unlooked-for...favourites...For...for...forgot...for.
- Possible pun on whore in who are suggesting those who revel in titles merely prostitute themselves.
Great princes' favourites
their fair
leaves
spread
But as the marigold at the sun's eye,
And in themselves
their pride lies buried,
For at a frown
they
in their
glory
die.
- "Even the princes' favourites have a transient fame that can be lost in a moment."
- A disparagement of the herd of nobility in the plurals: favourites, themselves, their, they and their.
The painful
warrior famoused
for
might,
After
a thousand victories once foiled
Is from
the book of
honour
razed quite,
And all the rest forgot
for which he toiled.
- Even a warrior who risks his life again and again can quickly lose his fame at the time of his first defeat.
- Now a disparagement of the singular hero: the sole warrior paradoxically with a plurality of victories.
- The deterioration of the f words from the initial favour is now graphically concluded with forgot.
Then happy I, that love
and
am beloved
Where I may not remove
nor be removed.
- This is what is important to the author. Not the frills of nobility nor the hard-earned fame of the warrior, but instead the simple reciprocated love of his subject.
- There is no usage of f in the couplet reinforcing the fact that the people he has been speaking of are entirely distinct from himself.
- Heavy emphasis on the love that is important to him echoed in beloved and remove.
Plutarch's Parallel Lives was a reference work for several of Shakespeare's plays including Julius Caesar, Anthony & Cleopatra and Coriolanus. Shakespeare may have had the following quotation of Plutarch's in mind when he wrote this sonnet:"Nor is it always in the most distinguished achievements that men's virtues or vices may be best discovered: but very often an action of small note, a short saying, or a jest, shall distinguish a person's real character more than the greatest sieges, or the most important battle."
Critical text © NigelDavies.home@Virgin.net