Sonnet 21

Sonnet 21

sonnet|21
So is it not with me as with that Muse,
Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,
Who heaven itself for ornament doth use
And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,
Making a couplement of proud compare
With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems,

With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare,
That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems.
O! let me, true in love, but truly write,
And then believe me, my love is as fair
As any mother's child, though not so bright
As those gold candles fixed in heaven's air:
Let them say more that like of hearsay well;
I will not praise that purpose not to sell.

Sonnet 21 was written by William Shakespeare. Like Sonnet 130, it addresses the issue of truth in love, as the speaker frankly admits that his lines, while less extravagant than those of other poets, are more truthful.

Paraphrase

I am unlike the other poet, who praises a woman made artificially beautiful by cosmetics, who compares her to the heavens, and indeed to everything beautiful. He proudly compares his beloved to the sun and moon, to the beauties of earth and sea, to the flowers of April. For myself, because my love is true, I wish merely to write truly. My beloved is as beautiful as any human, though not so bright as the stars. Those who like exaggerated rumors may speak more if they wish; since I do not plan to sell my beloved, I will not waste time with superfluous praise.

ource and analysis

George Wyndham calls this the first sonnet to address the problem of the rival poet; Beeching and others, however, differentiate the poet mentioned here from the one later seen competing with Shakespeare's speaker for the affections of a male beloved.

Edmond Malone found parallel descriptions of the stars as candles in "Romeo and Juliet" and "Macbeth". While Alexander Schmidt glosses line 13 as "fall in love with what others have praised," Edward Dowden has it "those who like to be buzzed about by talk." As William James Rolfe notes, the line refers definitely to the type of exaggerated praise the sonnet has just described.

George Wyndham notes a parallel to the final line in Samuel Daniel's "Delia" 53; in that poem, the speaker condemns the "mercenary lines" of other poets. As Madeleine Doran and others note, criticism of exaggerated praise was only slightly less common in Renaissance poetry than such praise itself.

Because of the repeated --are rhymes in the third quatrain, the poem has six rhymes instead of seven.

References

*Alden, Raymond. "The Sonnets of Shakespeare, with Variorum Reading and Commentary". Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1916.
*Baldwin, T. W. "On the Literary Genetics of Shakspeare's Sonnets". Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1950.
*Booth, Stephen. "Shakespeare's Sonnets". New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.
*Doran, Madeleine. "The Idea of Excellence in Shakespeare." "Shakespeare Quarterly" 27 (1976): 133-49.
*McGuire, Philip. "Shakespeare's Non-Shakespearean Sonnets." "Shakespeare Quarterly" 38 (1987): 304-19.

External links

* [http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/xxicomm.htm Analysis]
* [http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-169,pageNum-24.html CliffsNotes]


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужна курсовая?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • SONNET — SONNE Poème à forme fixe de quatorze vers répartis en quatre strophes, le sonnet tient dans la littérature européenne, et notamment française, une place extrêmement importante. On sait qu’«un sonnet sans défaut vaut seul un long poème» (Boileau) …   Encyclopédie Universelle

  • Sonnet 18 — sonnet|18 Shall I compare thee to a summer s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer s lease hath all too short a date; Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his… …   Wikipedia

  • Sonnet 55 — Sonnet|55 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 besmear d with sluttish time. When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils… …   Wikipedia

  • Sonnet 1 — sonnet|1 From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty s rose might never die, But as the riper should by time decease, His tender heir might bear his memory: But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed st thy light st… …   Wikipedia

  • Sonnet 30 — Sonnet|30 When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time s waste: Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, For precious… …   Wikipedia

  • Sonnet 63 — Sonnet|63 Against my love shall be, as I am now, With Time s injurious hand crush d and o er worn; When hours have drain d his blood and fill d his brow With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn Hath travell d on to age s steepy night, And… …   Wikipedia

  • Sonnet 2 — sonnet|2 When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, And dig deep trenches in thy beauty s field, Thy youth s proud livery, so gazed on now, Will be a tatter d weed, of small worth held: Then being ask d where all thy beauty lies, Where all the… …   Wikipedia

  • Sonnet 29 — Sonnet|29 When, in disgrace with fortune and men s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like… …   Wikipedia

  • Sonnet 13 — Sonnet|13 O! that you were your self; but, love, you are No longer yours, than you your self here live: Against this coming end you should prepare, And your sweet semblance to some other give: So should that beauty which you hold in lease Find no …   Wikipedia

  • Sonnet 3 — Sonnet|3 Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest Now is the time that face should form another; Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest, Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother. For where is she so fair whose unear d womb… …   Wikipedia

  • Sonnet 60 — Sonnet|60 Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end; Each changing place with that which goes before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend. Nativity, once in the main of light, Crawls to maturity,… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”