Sonnet 54

Sonnet|54
O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give.
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour, which doth in it live.
The canker blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
When summer's breath their masked buds discloses:
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo'd, and unrespected fade;
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall vade, my verse distills your truth.
Shakespeare's Sonnet 54 uses an extended metaphor to develop the theme of the beauty of the beloved and the preservative power of verse.

Paraphrase

Beauty itself seems more beautiful when it is accompanied by honesty. We love the rose for its looks, but its beautiful smell endears us to it even more. The dog rose (or canker-eaten rose) looks as beautiful as a genuine rose, but because that beauty is solely in appearance, dog-roses live unadmired and die alone. Not so with roses: sweet smells arise from their sweet deaths. And so of you, beautiful youth; when your beauty and youth die, my poetry will still display the truth of you.

ource and analysis

Edmond Malone was the first to identify the "canker rose" with the dog-rose. His conjecture is generally accepted, although George Steevens notes that this comparison makes nonsense of line 5, as the dog-rose is far lighter in color than the rose. Almost alone, George Wyndham argues that "canker rose" refers, rather, to a canker-eaten rose (as in 35).

Henry Charles Beeching noted verbal parallels to a scene in "Hamlet".

Stephen Booth perceives a pun on "dye" in line 11's "die".

Quarto's "by" in line 14 is almost universally amended to "my"; however, "by" is defensible if "distill" is intransitive.

ee also

Shakespeare's sonnets

External links

* [http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/54comm.htm Analysis]
* [http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-169,pageNum-57.html CliffsNotes]