The Place 2 Be: Shakespeare's Sonnets

Critique of Sonnet 68

SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS

Theme: Age
Content: The subject now ages and Nature uses him as an example of true beauty as opposed to the false cosmetic beauty of others.

Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,
When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,
Before these bastard signs of fair were borne
Or durst inhabit on a living brow;

The subject's beauty is again affirmed to be transient.

Before contains an anagram of rose in respect of the Quarto spelling of s which resembles an f. Rose perhaps identifies the subject (as in 67 and other sonnets) as Henry WRiOtheSlEy.

flowers contains an anagram of rose.

Before the golden tresses of the dead,
The right of sepulchres, were shorne away
To live a second life on second head;
Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay.

This is an amusing description of how wigs were used from the dead's hair to adorn the living: an example of false beauty - the opposite of the subject' true beauty. Evidently of particular distaste to Shakespeare who was balding and not known to have ever adorned himself with a wig.

Before again contains an anagram of rose in respect of the Quarto spelling of s.

shorne (Quarto spelling) contains an anagram of rose.

In him those holy antique hours are seen
Without all ornament, itself and true,
Making no summer of another's green,
Robbing no old to dress his beauty new;

The subject is seen to be true without ornament of wigs although he is now showing his age.

The Quarto spelling of hours (howers) contains an anagram of rose.

another's contains an anagram of rose.

And him as for a map doth nature store,
To show false art what beauty was of yore.

The subject's face is again likened to a map, as in Q1, showing where true beauty lay.

store contains an anagram of rose.