Kate Hughes
Sonnet Explication
9/19/11
Sonnet XIX, written by Shakespeare to his young male patron, admires his beauty
as well as accuses time but ends up defying it. The poem begins by stating ways time is
harmful and can destroy anything. However, in quatrain two Shakespeare says time can
affect anything except for his love-the man. As stated in the third quatrain, he doesn’t
want the patron to get the “lines there with thine antique pen” and lose his beauty.
Finally, in the couplet, Shakespeare challenges time saying “do your worst, it will not
affect my love.” This poem reveals the theme, “Although time is strong and can destroy
anything, it must not stop Shakespeare’s love which is even tougher and will live on
through the cherished poem forever.”
At first Shakespeare has an accusatory tone towards time, saying it “…plucks the
keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws…makes glad and sorry seasons…etc.” This
personification of time and aging reveals how destructive and powerful it really is. The
diction also adds to the negative emphasis on time. Shakespeare calls it “Devouring”
which means “to consume something destructively.” This is a good description of time as
it consumes lives through death and aging as well as eroding nature and buildings.
However, in the first part of the Shakespeare seems to be allowing time to do all the
horrible things, but then the tone changes to defiant.
In the end of the second quatrain the tone alteration becomes evident through the
word, “but, I forbid thee one most heinous crime…” Shakespeare can tolerate time taking
over most life, but he will not permit his love to experience the wrath of time. Basically,
he doesn’t want time to age the patron and take away his beauty and eventually his life.
This is revealed through the metaphor of, “thine antique pen” which represents the
wrinkles associated with aging. He seems to be pleading in the third quatrain to not take
away his love but in the last couplet Shakespeare challenges time saying, “do thy
worst…despite thy wrong…” He is raging against time begging yet confronting it, and
finally the last tone change occurs.
In the couplet Shakespeare states, “My love shall in my verse ever live young.”
He is now praising his love and basking in its glory and power, saying nothing can ever
stop it. This statement means that even if time eventually takes them from each other,
their love will live on documented in this poem. The tone is now positive- heartening,
admiring- and the theme is divulged, “Although time is strong and can destroy anything,
it must not stop Shakespeare’s love which is even tougher and will live on through the
cherished poem forever.”
Even if time can harm lion’s paws, pluck tiger’s teeth, and burn phoenixes,
Shakespeare’s love for the patron will not be destroyed. The reader is introduced to
horrible time in the first quatrain, but after imploring it to save the patron’s beauty and
eventually standing up against it, clearly nothing can take down this devotion they have
for each other, especially death.