The Place 2 Be: Shakespeare's Sonnets

Critique of Sonnet 55

SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS

Theme: The Power of Verse
Content: Assertion of Shakespeare's ego in a proud and magnificent pronouncement that his poetry, and thereby his subject, will outlast physical monuments and time itself. Probably inspired by Horace's concluding Ode 3.30 which celebrates what he has written by stating "Exegi monumentum aere perennius": "I have built a monument more lasting than bronze".

Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.

The emphasis of this sonnet is the principle of the subject living in the author's verse, being an intrinsic part of it, and outliving his own lifetime by being recorded in verse. Thus, there is an abundance of words that contain the word in to literally demonstrate that: princes, shine, in, living, 'Gainst, find, in, ending.

Equally, to reinforce this, the word live is omnipresent, explicitly and within words in each quatrain and the couplet: outlive, living, oblivious, live.

I think it inconceivable that the subject is not identified within the words of this sonnet aswell given that the subject will shine more bright in these contents. The key, and therefore the identity, is not obvious, although there is a preponderance of words containing the letters H and W (Henry Wriothesley? William Herbert? Henry & William?) and especially R and D (Robert Dudley?) and S (Shakespeare?).

When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.

The word living literally combines the 2 essential words to this sonnet: live and in.

'Gainst death and all oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.

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

judgement here may be the Biblical Last Judgement where the subject will be resurrected, but until then will live on in this verse.

Exegi monumentum aere perennius
Regalique situ pyramidum altius,
Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens
Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis
Annorum series et fuga temporum.

I have built a monument more lasting than bronze,
Higher than the pyramids on their regal throne,
Which neither the wasting rain, nor the north wind in its fury
Could ever destroy, nor the innumerable
Sequence of the years and swift time

Horace: Ode 3.30