I never saw that you did painting did need,
And therefore to your fair no painting set.
I found, or thought I found, you did exceed
The barren tender of a poet’s debt.
And therefore have I slept in your report,
That you yourself, being extant, well might show
How far a modern quill doth come too short
Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.
This silence for my sin sis you impute,
Which shall be muost my glory, being dumb,
For I impair not being beauty being mute,
When others would give life and bring a tomb.
There lives more life in one of you fair eyes
Than both you poets can in praise devise.
In some of Shakespeare’s Sonnets we the reader can see that he was against the use of cosmetics. Commonly referred to as “painting”, we see this sonnet to prove his dislike for the use of beautifying agents. 1-2: ‘I never thought, because of the way you appear to me, that you ever needed cosmetics, and therefore, you don’t need a cosmetic kit to make you beautiful.’ “Set” here can also be read as a verb, as in the drying of the make-up. (Make-up in Elizabethan England was quite different from today’s, including some such elements as lead in the composition). 3-4: “Exceed” does refer to “the barren tender”, but it wouldn’t be inappropriate to infer that Shakespeare is reflecting upon an ‘exceeding’ amount of cosmetics applied. But better is the ‘exceeding in the absent [or of no worth] payments (of flattery) of a poet’s debt. “Debt” is taken to mean both the debt that poets have to beauty, as their duty to praise it, and also a pun on monetary deficiency. This then refers back to “tender”, meaning both soft and supple as well as currency. All of these words create a theme of finance, perhaps outlining the worth of the addressee. 5: “Report” meaning description. 6-8: ‘Because your (still) existing self very well may show just how far a modern quill [writing instrument at the time] comes too short in speaking of your worth, the worth that grows in you’.
Free Essays On Shakespeare’s Sonnet 88 Sonnet essays
Analysis of Sonnet 88 When thou shalt be dispos’d to set me light, And place my merit in the eye of scorn, Upon thy side against myself I’ll fight, And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn. With mine own weakness being best acquainted, Upon thy part I can set down a story Of faults conceal’d wherein I am attainted,- That thou in losing me shall win much glory: And I by this will be a gainer too- For bending all my loving thoughts on thee The injuries that to my self I do, Doing thee vantage, double vantage me, Such is my love, to thee I so belong, That for thy right myself will bear all wrong. A good example of the octave/sestet division is seen in this sonnet. This poem, although slightly past the rival poet sequence, can be read, I feel, as addressed to the rival poet. In the octave, words such as “merit” and “virtuous”, coupled with line 6 suggest an addressee of the same profession. But it very well may be said it is simply of friendship, reading line 4 as ‘and prove that you are right, although you are renouncing our friendship’. In the second quatrain, Shakespeare supposes he can write a story on the friend’s impairment of their relationship. 10-12: ‘If by concentrating all my loving thoughts towards you, the injuries, as a result of my thought, that I will inflict upon myself, do prove to be advantageous to you, but twice that to me’. It is difficult to say whether “double” is hyperbolical or if it has some abstruse mathematical conceit (as seen in sonnet 6, lines 5-10). It does reflect upon “gainer” in line 9, which supports the reading of any gain to the friend as a gain to the poet (Shakespeare). 13-14: ‘This is the way my love is, and I belong to you in the same respect that I will bear all wrongdoing in order to place you in the right’.