"He was known for his sugared sonnets among his friends," Francis Meres mentioned Shakespeare in his Palladis Tamia: Wit's Treasury(1598). Publishing sonnets in 1609, Thomas Thrope, publisher, dedicated to Shakespeare as "master of sonnets" (Abrams et al. 866-67). What could they have said that sonnets by William Shakespeare (1564-1616) were popular that much? Though it seems there will not be a simple answer, for a better understanding of Shakespeare's sonnets, this writing offers an explication of "Sonnet 73" in The Norton Anthology of English Literature:
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the growing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long. (879)
This sonnet rhymed abab cdcd efef gg form. Most of his sonnets were written in the 1590s at the height of the vogue, but they were not published until 1609. The first 126 are addressed to a young man; the remainder (with the exception of the last two, which are conventional sonnets on Cupid) are addressed to an unknown "Dark Lady." Whether or not Shakespeare laid bare his heart in his sonnets, as many critics have contended, they are his most personal poems.
For understanding the sonnet, according to editors Bender and Squier, "The sonnet is the most popular and widely used poetic form in English poetry. Since its introduction in the 1530s, nearly every major British and American poet has made use of the form" (Sonnet xxi). In Versification, James McAuley defines that the sonnet is, "In the strict sense, a fourteen-line poem usually in iambic pentameters. The Italian or petrachan type, consists of an octet, usually rhymed cdecde or in some permutation of these. The English sonnet type consists of three quatrains plus a concluding couplet, rhymed variously, the Shakespearian form being abab cdcd efef gg. In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century use, the term was also loosely applied to any lyric poem, especially a love-poem, as in [John] Donne's (1572-1631) Songs and Sonnets" (82).
The sonnet, however, is not simply a fourteen-line poem having a prescribed rhyme scheme. Certainly most sonnets are fourteen-line poems, and most sonneteers do confine themselves to prescribed rhyme patterns (Bender and Squier xxii).
The theme, in Sonnet 73, is the poet's aging. Each quatrain develops an image of lateness, of approaching extinction - of a season, of a day, and of a fire, but they also apply to a life (Abrams et al. 867). The poet compares his age to three images through the quatrains: autumn, the dying of the year (first quatrain); the dying of the fire (third quatrain). The first line draws a picture of himself, "in me," and in a certain time, "That time of year," of his life (surely, he is old now). We can see that the poet is sitting alone by the window and talking to his lover who is not with him - about the life, of glory or tragedy, in which he has spent his splendid golden days.
The poet is clever to observe all the things in nature - time and space, noise and song, happiness and misery, joy and sorrow - further life and death. In the second line the time comes slowly to his window and shows him it is autumn. It makes a tree in his garden drift "leaves" until "none" or "few" hang. In Lines 3 and 4 we learn that the poet feels lonesome seeing the falling "yellow leaves" by the "cold, Bare ruined" song sang in the late summer (In its preoccupation with time, the first quatrain looks backward to summer, when "late the sweet birds sang."). He also feels himself as the tree that loses its glorious emblem and parts of life. Presumably, he is so sad but is not miserable because he still has a single hope of the lover like a "hope" in the O. Henry's The Last Leaf.
The progression of time is from a "Bare" light scene of winter day (line 4), and to a "twilight" scene (line 5), and then to a "black night" scene (line 7). (Night is the time when a fire is usually allowed to die.) We can notice that the progression from day to dusk (as "after sunset fadeth in the west" in line 6) to "black" night emphasizes and supports the image of night as "Death's second self (line 8)." (It seems to suggest night as the time one most fear dying.) "Death," as "black night," comes slowly and inevitably "by and by."
Also, we can see the three images's dying and the progression of dying is at work: each of the dyings is shorter and more narrow than the last, as though the poet was aware of the quickening of death's approach. The first is a season's dying (first quatrain). The second, a day's dying (second quatrain), and third, a fire's dying (third quatrain). Each of the three images begins with a more positive tone than it ends with. The increasingly self-diminishing revisions in line 2 offer a clear example: "yellow leaves, or none, or few." The yellow leaves, like the "twilight" and the "glowing" of the fire (line 9), are attempts at an optimism that the poet cannot maintain. In each of the images he is forced to say what he originally seems to have wanted to withhold, even from his own consciousness.
The poem's images tell a story of an old man's [the poet's] death during the night after a cold winter day. After the fire's dying, as the "ashes" (line 10) of the youth, the poet accepts his fate when death is no longer a prospect but a reality: "deathbed" (line 11). In line 13 the poet also admits himself as self-consuming fire for his death. The three quatrains enhance the poet's sense of loss and helplessness in aging.
For a complement to the lover on his love's strength, the couplet addressed to the young man begins on a positive statement: "This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong" (line 13). He sees a death as his leaving him as "To love that well, which thou must leave ere long" (line 14).
Throughout the poem, the poet has expressed, not his self-image, but what he imagines to be his lover's image of him: "thou mayst in me behold (line 1), "In me thou seest" (line 5), and "This thou perceiv'st" (line 14). "Leave" in line 14 does not mean more than "leave behind."
Shakespeare's Sonnet 73 well fills and fits the three quatrains and single couplet of the Elizabethan sonnet. We can be sure there is no doubt to believe that some of Shakespeare's sonnets, like Sonnet 73, were well known and he was surely placed at the head of the dramatists and high among the non-dramatic poets. As Bender and Squier claimed (75), in the sixteenth century, Shakespeare is England's greatest playwright and the best of the Elizabethan sonneteers.
Works Cited
Abrams, M. H., et al., The Norton Anthology of English
Literature. Vol. 1. New York: Norton, 1986.
Bender, Robert M., and Charles L. Squier, eds. The
Sonnet: An Anthology. New York: Washington Square
P, 1987.
McAuley, James. Versification: A Short Introduction.
Michigan: Michigan UP, 1985.
*This critical essay AN EXPLICATION OF SHAKESPEARE'S SONNET 73 was written by Paul Lee (이풍호) in 1994.
