#Sonnet 17 series#

The original text from 1609 Quarto for this sonnet is: The sonnet ends with a typical notion that should the young man have a child, he shall live both in the child and in the poet's rhyme. (' If I could write the beauty of your eyes,/'). Shakespeare argues that the descriptions in fact are not strong enough, and they do not do justice to the man's beauty. Shakespeare even goes as far as to say that his verse is a 'tomb' that hides half of his beauty.

OCLC 36806589.Shakespeare insists that his comparisons, even though they are quite strong, are not exaggerations. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

#Sonnet 17 series#

The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series (Rev.В ed.). Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Shakespeare's Sonnets: With Three Hundred Years of Commentary.

Richard Attenborough, for the 2002 compilation album, When Love Speaks ( EMI Classics).

'Antique song' is both ancient and distorted ('antic') song. What the youth is truly owed ('your true rights') could be dismissed in the future as 'a poet's rage,' or rejected as the 'stretched metre of an antique song' 'stretched' firstly intends 'exaggerated,' but was used technically of earlier poetic styles. The poet's manuscripts ('my papers'), once they are discolored ('yellowed') with age, will be the subject of ridicule ('scorn'd'), just as 'old men of less truth then tongue' are derided. Shakespeare insists that his comparisons, even though they are limited in strength, are not exaggerations. A future age, believing that such divine perfection could never ('ne'er') happen, would think the poet's efforts exaggeration. ДЄs in Sonnet 85 Shakespeare's precedent is a phrase from Horace's Satires, 'ad unguem / factus homo' ( Sermones 1.5.32) 'it is the touch that perfects the man,' which was an expression from carvers who in modelling gave the finishing touch to their work with the nail (' unguem'). Future ages would say, 'this poet lies / Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.' 'Such heavenly touches' were the divine touches traditionally bestowed by the Muses on the poet, or they are the strokes of the brush or chisel of a divinely inspired hand, which, having 'touched' an earthly face, makes it perfect. Again, if the poet could number all the youth's graces in 'fresh numbers,' then future times would accuse him of falsehood. Shakespeare argues that his descriptions are not strong enough, and do not do justice to the man's beauty ('If I could write the beauty of your eyes'). Shakespeare even goes as far as to say that the 'tomb' hides half the youth's beauty. The poet's verse is inadequate 'heaven knows' is either an exclamation or part of the sentence: 'heaven knows that his verse is but a tomb' (with a hint of 'tome').

The poet asks who would believe his verse in the future ('in time to come'), if the youth's true excellence ('most high deserts') were to 'fill' his verse. The twelfth line features a mimetic stretching into two syllables of the word 'stretched' to fit the metre:ДЄnd stretchГЁd metre of an antique song: (17.12) The sixth line exhibits two fairly common variations, a final extrametrical syllable or feminine ending, and the rightward movement of the first ictus (the resulting four-position figure, Г—В Г—В /В /, is sometimes referred to as a minor ionic):ДЄnd in fresh numbers number all your graces, (17.6) = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts. The sonnet's fourth line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter: Sonnet 17 is written in iambic pentameter, a form of meter based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. It follows the form's typical rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg. Sonnet 17 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet, consisting of three quatrains followed by a couplet.