Sonnet 126

Sonnet 126

O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy pow'r
Dost hold Time's fickle glass, his sickle hour,
Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st
Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow'st.
If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,
As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back,
She keeps thee to this purpose: that her skill
May time disgrace and wretched minute kill.
Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure;
She may detain but not still keep her treasure.
Her audit (though delayed) answered must be,
And her quietus is to render thee.
(                                                            )
(                                                            )

–William Shakespeare

Written in 1594, Sonnet 126 is one of 154 sonnets by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is the final member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet shows how Time and Nature coincide.

One may also choose to look at the original spelling of the text here.

Envoi

Sonnet 126 has been dubbed the envoi to the "Fair Youth" sonnets. An envoy or envoi, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary[1] is “The action of sending forth a poem; hence, the concluding part of a poetical or prose composition; the author's parting words; a dedication, postscript. Now chiefly the short stanza which concludes a poem written in certain archaic metrical forms.”

Sethna has argued that Sonnet 126 was handed to William Herbert (the "Fair Youth" in his view) just before his 27th birthday, completing the period of their 9-year friendship with words that were clear, allusive, highly emotional and deeply pensive.[2] Paul Ramsey, author of “The Fickle Glass: A Study of Shakespeare’s Sonnets,” also writes that, “sonnet 126 seems a very natural envoy”.[3]

The same idea of closing is paralleled by the authors of The Norton Anthology.[4] This "sonnet" or envoi, of six couplets, concludes the part of the sequence apparently addressed to the youth and formally signals a change in tone and subject matter in the remaining sonnets.[5]

Structure

In his article, “Shakespeare’s Sonnet 126,” Graves explains, "this sonnet is formally aberrational because its terminal ‘couplet’ appears as two empty lines, enclosed by italicized parentheses. Oddly, too, its substantive part comprises six rhymed pentameter couplets, instead of the usual three quatrains with alternating rhyme".[6] As a twelve line, alternating couplet poem, Shakespeare's Sonnet 126 does not fit the sonnet form, a form adhered to throughout the majority of the collection.

Along with Sonnet 99, Sonnet 126 is an exception to the rule of cross-rhyming quatrains followed by a couplet, a formative rule that all other Sonnets follow diligently. Instead, it is a structurally odd poem with 12 lines made up of 6 rhyming couplets (Sethna 46). In addition, Sonnet 126 fails to fit the outward verse pattern in similarity with both Sonnet 99 and Sonnet 145 ([7]). Sonnet 126 thus stands out as a unique poem in the sequence, not fitting a strict sonnet structure, but also not following any sort of deviance pattern seen throughout the rest of the series.

Analysis

Original: O thou my lovely boy, who in thy power

Dost hold time’s fickle glass, his sickle hour;

Who has by waning grown and therein show’st

Thy lovers with’ring as thy sweet self grow’st

If nature, sov’reign mistress over wrack,

As thou go’st onward still will pluck thee back,

She keeps thee to this purpose that her skill

May time disgrace and wretched minutes kill.

Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure,

She may detain, but not still keep her treasure!

Her audit, though delay’d, answer’d must be,

And her Quietus is to render thee.

( )

( )

Paraphrase: O you, my lovely boy, who hold in your power Time’s hour-glass and his sickle—you who wane as you grow older and in that show your friends withering as you yourself grow up: if Nature, sovereign mistress over chaos, as you go onwards will ever pluck you back, she keeps you to demonstrate her power to hold up time. Yet fear her, you who are Nature’s darling: she may detain her treasure, but not keep it for ever. Her last account, though delayed, must be paid and her discharge is to render you up.[8]

Ramsey, when examining the overview of plot of the sonnet, observes that Shakespeare begins Sonnet 126 with a claim, then moves to a fear, and then ends with a stark precise accepting of the power and unavoidability of time and death.[9] When analyzing these 12 lines, Sethna suggests that the lovely boy is becoming substantially older in years with out losing any beauty; in fact he is increasing with beauty: he has grown by waning, he has turned more boyishly lovely as the span of his life lessens further and further.[10] Sethna believes that the boy’s lack of aging underscores Shakespeare’s aging, and Shakespeare’s aging highlight’s nature’s ability to ignore Time in the boy’s case. This is emphasized by Nature’s capacity to foil Time’s destructiveness. Nonetheless, the capacity can only last so long.[11] Slightly paralleled by A. L. Rowse, author of Shakespeare’s Sonnets: The Problems Solved, lines 3-4 are interpreted as alluding to the youth’s beauty as a contrast with his friends. As the youth’s beauty wanes, so his friends wither, as he grows older; contrasting Sethna’s view of the youth’s beauty accentuating Shakespeare’s lack of beauty. Rowse also suggests that this idea may also imply a further consistency; Shakespeare’s concern with the ebb and flow of things; their waxing and waning. Perhaps the influence of constant Ovidian thought.[12] Anspacher too, interprets the idea of time with a similar view stating that love is not time’s fool. In other words, even Time, “the most willful and absolute dictator in the world, cannot treat Love as he would treat his fool or his jester”,[13] and eventually [Time] must succeed to Nature. As Murray Krieger notes, author of A Window to Criticism; Shakespeare’s Sonnets and modern poetics, time’s sickle represents an “ignoble reduction of time. A reduction that cannot be produced, no matter the tool nor the wistfulness.[14]

Her audit, though delay’d, answer’d must be,

And her Quietus is to render thee.

When analyzing this couplet, Author and critic R. Graves reasons that this couplet is not only the pictographic "Quietus" of line 12 but also the "delayed Oddity" mentioned in line 11: "Audite (though delayd) answer'd must be." (Here even the parentheses seem like a predictive pun). One meaning of this line is, "My reader must try to explain my terminal 'Oddity.' Another pun occurs in the verb "to render," which has three relevant meanings. [15] The first, "to repeat,” seems connected with the punning phrase "two rendered he" and with the couplet's "repetition." But the other two meanings are more interesting: "to melt (fat, etc.),” and to "reproduce or represent, esp. by artistic means; to depict.” These meanings join the tangled double entendres in "Enter [Endure, End here, And hear] Quietuses two [to] render thee" to suggest such readings of line 12 as "You're suffering melt-down over this couplet" and "Nature's two 'Quietuses' intrude here to depict you".[16] Because an "Audit" was originally a "hearing,"[17] one ironic idea here is that something silent (like the missing couplet) can be "heard" and "must be answered--or can be "Anne's word." The pun "End here" (line 12) signals the poet's early ending in line 12, not 14. A different kind of runic wit occurs in the punning conceit "Enter Quietuses to [two]" where two abstractions—the empty couplet lines—hover like hooded figures in a medieval morality.[18] Though scholars may differ in their interpretation of text, the central idea seems to be very clear. Sonnet 126 deals with a marked lapse of time and leads the reader to the realization that the relationship between author and subject has continued on for years but has now begun to wane or fizzle out.[19] Ramsey too believes that the central idea rests in the reality of the natural relation that must be paid and the truth that must be faced by the author. Through these words, it is divulged that love changes; beauty passes; and men die.[20]

Missing text

While previous sonnets of this sequence act to console against attempt to circumvent time’s inevitable destructive victory, scholars have argued that 126 concedes the point. Rather than suggest that the boy can indeed find a way around time, “here the speaker makes no such proposals; this twelve-line poem lacks the final two lines where, in the sonnet, the speaker often constructs his consolations. By the end of this subsequence, mutability has proved to be the speaker's ally rather than a foe to be defeated. Instead of seeking consolations for the destruction of beauty, the final three couplets simply warn the young man of nature's inevitable defeat at the hands of time”.[21] The speaker here seems to accept, rather than fight against, the inevitability of time’s changes.

While inherent, unpreventable change at the hands of time stand as a negative throughout the previous poems, it here takes on a beneficial role. Although the boy’s beauty may be destroyed by time, time has also waned the speaker’s love, making this destruction more bearable. As Stockard argues, “Shakespeare…constructs the sequence so as to demonstrate the consolation provided by the waning of the speaker's love, and in the final sonnet of the first subsequence the speaker accepts the consolation that changing reality provides”.[22] In accepting the reality of his unrequited, and ultimately shifting, love, the speaker is able to find peace, to some extent, in his relationship with the boy.

References

  1. ↑ (http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/63102?rskey=elyQS0&result=1&isAdvanced=false#envoi)
  2. ↑ (Sethna 113)
  3. ↑ Ramsey 133
  4. ↑ (“The Norton Shakespeare”: Shakespeare, William. “Sonnet 126.” The Norton Anthology. 2nd ed. Eds. Greenblatt, Stephen, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, and Katherine Eisaman Maus. New York: W. W Norton, 2008. 1797. Print)
  5. ↑ (p. 1797)
  6. ↑ Graves, R. (1996). Shakespeare's sonnet 126. Explicator, 54(4), 203.
  7. ↑ Ramsey 125
  8. ↑ Shakespeare, William, and A. L. Rowse. Shakespeare's Sonnets : The Problems Solved : A Modern Edition With Prose Versions, Introduction And Notes / By A. L. Rowse. n.p.: New York : Harper and Row [1973], 1973. SLU Libraries Catalog. Web. 16 Nov. 2012.
  9. ↑ (158)
  10. ↑ Sethna 46
  11. ↑ Sethna 46
  12. ↑ Rowse 123
  13. ↑ Anspacher 32
  14. ↑ Krieger 125
  15. ↑ (http://www.oed.com/search?searchType=dictionary&q=render&_searchBtn=Search)
  16. ↑ (Graves 206)
  17. ↑ (http://www.oed.com/search?searchType=dictionary&q=audit&_searchBtn=Search
  18. ↑ (Graves 206)
  19. ↑ (Sethna 46)
  20. ↑ (Ramsey 125)
  21. ↑ Stockard, Emily E. "Patterns of Consolation in Shakespeare's Sonnets 1-126." Studies in Philology 94.4 (1997): 465-93. Web.
  22. ↑ Stockard 491

External links