How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame
Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose,
Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
Oh, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!
That tongue that tells the story of thy days,
Making lascivious comments on thy sport,
Cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise.
Naming thy name , blesses an ill report.
Oh what a mansion have those vices got
Which for thy habitation chose out thee,
Where beauty’s veil doth cover every blot
And all things turns to fair that eyes can see!
Take heed, dear heart, of this large privelege:
The hardest knife ill used doth lose his edge.
First Quatrain
First of all, spot can mean two things: ‘to discover’ and also ‘to stain’; therefore, the shame that “you” make can both (at the same time) point out the beauty of your name, that is possibly increasing in popularity; also ‘to stain’ the beauty of “your” name. Knowing this, we must read the poem twice, one for each possible reading (also notice the floral theme in the first stanza as well). Since he describeds “name” as budding, (and the fragrance of a rose as sweet), “in what sweets” can refer to the “name”, and then of course, the person themself. Now, question: [first the analogy of canker being the sins; thus, as the canker destroys the rose, this person’s sins destroy his name (and remember! only “name” at this point)] which one?
Second Quatrain
“Naming thy name”: naming from the stories that have been told about this person, such as rumors. (For instance, not too far from this example, somebody you have never met, but the name is known by you, is regarded as a whore. Whether this rumor is true or not, this idea will be attached to the person who has this name. Same idea here). Line 8, depending on punctuation, can be read one of two ways (more duality!): if there is not punctuation, only a period, then “blesses” is a verb, “naming” is the action of the tongue; therefore, we can read “Naming thy name blesses and ill report” as ‘the tongue that names you (rumors, or puts a background to this “name”) gives blessings to “an ill report”; (of course, the comments of dispraise against your name).
Free Essays On Shakespeare’s Sonnet 97
Analysis of Sonnet 97
How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!-
What old December’s bareness everywhere!
And yet this time remov’d was summer’s time,-
The teeming autumn big with rich increase
Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime,
Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:
Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me
But hope of orphans, and unfather’d fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And thou away the very birds are mute:
Or if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.
What a beginning to a great sonnet. This sonnet, understood quite will in the first quatrain, presents a few difficulties throughout the second and third quatrains. This is obviously addressed to a loved one, more specifically a woman who Shakespeare loved. 5: ‘This period of separation from you was due to summer’, where “summer’s time” signifies his youth, moreover, his sexual prime. 6: ‘Overflowing autumn [his middle age] is rich with children produced from luxuriant [or frolicsome] experiences of my youth’. Line 8 closes this quatrain with a more happy than mournful meaning, for the widowed reveres the child even more after the father’s death. In line 9, I read “abundant issue” as ‘topic of general debate or concern’, referring to the “lords’ decease” in line 8, but it could also mean a person capable of bearing many children, either the addressee or the woman of his prime, or even Shakespeare himself. If the first, then it is addressed to more than one person and is a result of his absence–he is not able to produce children, only obtain orphans. But if the second, it modifies his hope for orphans. If Shakespeare is the “abundant issue” then this is a fine reading; however, if the “abundant issue” is the child of the widow, this poses a problem because it faults logic to say that the mother is widowed “Yet” her child is an orphan.