Free Essay on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 65

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Recommended: Critical analysis of the poem sonnet by William Shakespeare

Here's Shakespeare's sonnet no. 65. I'm going to (a) space it out and (b) add in a running commentary that might be helpful to suggest the kinds of reactions one might have in reading it. Let me know if this helps.

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea

"nor"="and not". A list . . . a slowly paced list. Of what sorts of things? what scope? what do they have in common?. . . Sentence is just beginning . . .

But sad mortality o'er-sways their power,

Ah . . . none of them last. And yet they sure seem strong and long-lasting. Is it true what he says? And anyway, so what? why mention this? Sentence not yet reached its main clause . . .

How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,

Aha: here's the point: the sad pathetic vulnerability of "beauty". Very general though. Does he mean any particular beauty? "Hold a plea" is nice: a sort of legal image, no?

Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

Beauty doesn't have much going for it to oppose time. "Action" seems to continue the legal metaphor. The image gets more particular--"a flower"--though it's still relatively general. We're most conscious of the tone of the lamenting speaker, less so of any particular things he's naming. . . Poor pathetic beauty . . . Sentence has ended.

Oh, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,

Fresh start: new sentence. Saying it again, more intensely. It's getting better, more specific. Lovely fresh sensuous appeal in "honey breath". Summer is a sweet-smelling person, a beloved presumably (you'd hardly enjoy smelling the sweet breath of anyone else). Its breath can hardly "hold out": wonder what that means? Last long enough? A singer sustaining a long note or phrase needs breath that will "hold out." And to "hold out against a siege" means to withstand a siege: so now the summer has turned into a besieged fortress or city. And the besieging enemy is using battering rams, and trying to wreck everything. Imagery: note that we're not totally visualizing summer as a person; it's a delicate suggestion that glides into the next image, that of the besieged town. And we don't visualize summer as a town, either. In fact "visualize" is too crude a term for what imagery this subtle does.

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