Sonnet 22

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Sonnet 22

Sonnet 22 in the 1609 Quarto.

My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
So long as youth and thou are of one date;
But when in thee time's furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate.
For all that beauty that doth cover thee,
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:
How can I then be elder than thou art?
O! therefore love, be of thyself so wary
As I, not for myself, but for thee will;
Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.
Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain,
Thou gav'st me thine not to give back again.

–William Shakespeare

Sonnet 22 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare, and is a part of the Fair Youth sequence.

In the sonnet, the speaker of the poem and a young man are represented as enjoying a healthy and positive relationship. The last line, however, hints at the speaker's doubts, which becomes prominent later in the sequence.

Synopsis

Sonnet 22 uses the image of mirrors to argue about age and its effects. The poet will not be persuaded he himself is old as long as the young man retains his youth. On the other hand, when the time comes that he sees furrows or sorrows on the youth’s brow, then he will contemplate the fact (“look”) that he must pay his debt to death (“death my days should expiate”). The youth’s outer beauty, that which ‘covers’ him, is but a proper garment (“seemly raiment”) dressing the poet’s heart. His heart thus lives in the youth’s breast as the youth’s heart lives in his: the hearts being one, no difference of age is possible (“How can I then be elder than thou art?”).^[1]

The poet admonishes the youth to be cautious. He will carry about the youth’s heart (“Bearing thy heart”) and protect (“keep”) it; “chary” is an adverbial usage and means ‘carefully.’ The couplet is cautionary and conventional: when the poet’s heart is slain, then the youth should not take for granted (“presume”) that his own heart, dressed as it is in the poet’s, will be restored: “Thou gav’st me thine not to give back again.”^[1]

Structure

Sonnet 22 is a typical English or Shakespeare sonnet. Shakespeare sonnets consists of three quatrains followed by a couplet, and follows the form's rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg. Like many of the poems in the sequence, the poem is largely written in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre containing five pairs of unstressed/stressed syllables per line. Sonnet 22 contains two lines in the third quatrain with an extra eleventh syllable.

Source and analysis

The poem is built on two conventional subjects for Elizabethan sonneteers. The notion of the exchange of hearts was popularized by Petrarch's Sonnet 48; instances may be found in Philip Sidney (Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia) and others, but the idea is also proverbial. The conceit of love as an escape for an aged speaker is no less conventional and is more narrowly attributable to Petrarch's Sonnet 143. The image cannot be used to date the sonnet, if you agree with most critics, that it was written by a poet in his mid-30s. Samuel Daniel employs the same concept in a poem written when Shakespeare was 29, and Michael Drayton used it when he was only 31. Stephen Booth perceives an echo of the Anglican marriage service in the phrasing of the couplet.

"Expiate" in line 4 formerly caused some confusion, since the context does not seem to include a need for atonement. George Steevens suggested "expirate"; however, Edmond Malone and others have established that expiate here means "fill up the measure of my days" or simply "use up." Certain critics, among them Booth and William Kerrigan, still perceive an echo of the dominant meaning.

The conventional nature of the poem, what Evelyn Simpson called its "frigid conceit," is perhaps a large part of the reason that this poem is not among the most famous of the sonnets today.

References

Sources

• Alden, Raymond (1916). The Sonnets of Shakespeare, with Variorum Reading and Commentary. Houghton-Mifflin, Boston.
• Baldwin, T. W. (1950). On the Literary Genetics of Shakspeare's Sonnets. University of Illinois Press, Urbana.
• Booth, Stephen (1977). Shakespeare's Sonnets. Yale University Press, New Haven.
• Dowden, Edward (1881). Shakespeare's Sonnets. London.
• Evans, G. Blakemore, Anthony Hecht, (1996). Shakespeare's Sonnets. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
• Hubler, Edwin (1952). The Sense of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Princeton University Press, Princeton.
• Schoenfeldt, Michael (2007). The Sonnets: The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s Poetry. Patrick Cheney, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
• Tyler, Thomas (1989). Shakespeare’s Sonnets. London D. Nutt.
• Vendler, Helen (1997). The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

External links

• Works related to Sonnet 22 (Shakespeare) at Wikisource
• Paraphrase and analysis (Shakespeare-online)
• Analysis

William Shakespeare Plays Tragedies Antony and Cleopatra Coriolanus Hamlet Julius Caesar King Lear Macbeth Othello Romeo and Juliet Sir Thomas More* Timon of Athens Titus Andronicus Troilus and Cressida Comedies All's Well That Ends Well As You Like It The Comedy of Errors Cymbeline Love's Labour's Lost Measure for Measure The Merchant of Venice The Merry Wives of Windsor A Midsummer Night's Dream Much Ado About Nothing Pericles, Prince of Tyre* The Taming of the Shrew The Tempest Twelfth Night The Two Gentlemen of Verona The Two Noble Kinsmen* The Winter's Tale Cardenio* Love's Labour's Won Histories King John Edward III* Richard II 1 Henry IV 2 Henry IV Henry V 1 Henry VI 2 Henry VI 3 Henry VI Richard III Henry VIII* See also Problem plays Late romances Characters A–K L–Z Chronology Performances Quarto publications First Folio Second Folio Poems Shakespeare's sonnets comparison Venus and Adonis The Rape of Lucrece The Phoenix and the Turtle The Passionate Pilgrim* A Lover's Complaint Life and works Birthplace and childhood home Apocrypha Bibliography Complete Works of William Shakespeare Translations Early editions Editors English Renaissance theatre Family Globe Theatre Handwriting Lord Chamberlain's Men/King's Men The Theatre Curtain Theatre New Place home Portraits Religious views Sexuality Spelling of his name Stratford-upon-Avon Style Legacy Attribution studies Authorship question Influence Memorials Screen adaptations Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Folger Shakespeare Library Shakespeare Quarterly Shakespeare's Globe (replica) Bardolatry Titles of works taken from Shakespeare * Shakespeare and other authors Lost