Alright, let's see if we can shed some
light on Sonnet 55, by William
Shakespeare, published in 160. I
think this is a good sonnet to
illustrate this notion that as long as
you're willing to look up words
in a dictionary and spend a bit of time
puzzling things out you can really do
this by yourself.
These sonnets are not that difficult -- at
least not all of them are. It just takes
a little bit of looking things up in a
dictionary. So in this case we start with
a conflict or contrast between two ways
of remembering, and the one is to build
monuments (like statues) and the
other one is to write poems. The word
"rhyme" here in the second line means
"poem." Now, the other word that
needs some explanation perhaps is "gilded,"
which simply means covered with gold. So
we'll just say golden. As we read this
now it says, "Not marble nor the gilded
monuments of princes shall outlive this
powerful rhyme." You can build a
statue for somebody, and there you go ...
... we should give him a bit more
of a body perhaps. Or you can write a
poem. Which one is better? Which one do
you prefer? Would you like to be
remembered through a poem or through a
statue? Now when I talk about this with
students they typically say, well, a
statue of course! A statue is way
better than a poem -- especially a sonnet!
But Shakespeare is trying to
play with language, and he's trying to
give the surprising answer that the poem
is better. That's what you should want!
Alright, well let's see how this
argument develops. He basically says [that]
poems outlive monuments. Poems live
longer. And you might say that's
weird. You can tear up a poem. Paper
doesn't last as long perhaps as a
monument, but let's see how the argument
develops. He says, "But you [the beloved]
shall shine more bright in these
contents / than unswept stone besmeared
with sluttish time."
Now this word "sluttish" here means dirty.
In Shakespeare's time this was
especially used to describe a woman who
was sluttish, in the sense not of being a
whore as much as being unhygienic and
dirty. So time then ticks on
and the idea is that over time this
statue is going to get grimy. It's going to get
dirty. We'll just a little bit of
color here -- we'll say that's dirt!
The poem meanwhile is going to shine
brightly over time. The poem doesn't
fade, and it's going to shine bright ... or at
least the beloved shines brightly in the
poem. Notice this clever little trick
here that Shakespeare uses. He started by
calling the monuments "marble" and "gilded"
but by this point they are "unswept stone."
They're just stone -- unadorned .
Nobody takes care of them. And so through
this kind of sleight of hand, by
changing the language, it's already
starting to sound much more negative to
have a statue put up for you. Alright,
let's go on to the next quatrain,
and here Shakespeare writes, "When
wasteful war shall statues overturn / And
broils root out the work of masonry, / Nor
Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall
burn / The living record of your memory."
Notice, by the way, that each quatrain has
its own kind of unity here. So four
lines form a quatrain and we have a
rhyming couplet at the end so that's
kind of how the sonnet is organized here.
The word "wasteful" here does not mean
that the war is not environmentally
friendly. "Wasteful" here means destructive.
War is destructive, and
during wars statues are often toppled
and destroyed. We have seen that,
so that seems to be a decent
argument. The word "broils" refers
to disturbances, or riots we'll call
them here. So disturbances or tumults ... And
the idea here is that we have this
metaphor of rooting something out. I
you think of masonry -- so buildings
are made of bricks -- he idea is
that if you have ivy, let's say, or or any
kind of plant growing over the masonry,
then over time they'll grow right into
the mortar in between the bricks. And
that starts to root out the masonry.
The idea here is that over time as we
have these disturbances and conflicts the
bricks start to fall. We'll draw a little
arrow here ... and buildings and statues
fall apart.
By contrast, that poem and the person in
it is still shining brightly!
Alright, the next line is a little bit
tricky here. It says, "Nor Mars his sword
nor wars quick fire," and "nor ... nor" means
really "neither ... nor." So neither "Mars his
sword" -- and you could say instead of
"his" you could say "Mars' sword" if
you use an apostrophe. Mars is the God
of War ... and this is
basically just personifying war. It's
saying "the violence of war" --
that's one factor -- nor "war's quick fire" ...
And fire here destroys as well. So take
your pick. You can destroy things through
physical violence with swords or through
fire. Neither of these things will burn
the living record of your memory. And the
living record, as you can probably guess
now, is the poem. I mean you could
burn one poem but if you publish a poem
enough you can't really get rid of that.
You can't really get rid of the memory
of the beloved. At this point you may
be thinking that's maybe not such a
bad argument. I wouldn't mind being
remembered through a poem.
Maybe he's making a good case. And as
I've said in other videos about the
sonnets, a sonnet is really an extended
pickup line. It's an attempt to
persuade you
that you should go
out with this person writing the sonnet.
It's all about cleverness and
showing off your wit. The next quatrain
reads, "Gainst death (the "a" is missing
there but it really means "against")
... against death and all-oblivious
enmity / Shall you pace forth; your praise
shall still find room / Even in the eyes
of all posterity / That wear this world
out to the ending doom." So the word
"enmity" here means "strife" or "conflict," and
"oblivious" means "forgetful." The idea
is that when there are conflicts in the
world it leads to a loss of memory.
Libraries are burned, we lose
records, and because of that strife is a
negative force in the world, especially
in terms of the loss of
precious things. But against this force
of strife and enmity shall you pace
forth. Your memory keeps kind of pacing
forth almost as if into battle. And you
are still being alive in a sense through
the poem. Then it says "your praise
shall still find room / Even in the
eyes of all posterity." "Posterity" is
future generations -- the
offspring of people, and so
as people read this poem over the
generations your praise is still going
to find room in people's eyes. I
fact, this can be taken quite literally,
especially in the the last lines as well,
this idea that you are reading the poem
and in your eyes you see the text.
The text is being reflected in your
eyes, and so in a sense the poem
is being remembered
in this way. Now the next line is
not the most flattering. It says "that
wear this world out to the ending doom."
The ending doom, if you think of time,
if we think of moments of time ...
this is at the very end. It's the final
judgment, when Christ comes back (this is
a Christian context here) and ushers in
eternal life. So at this point that's
the ending doom, and in the
meanwhile people are wearing this world
out. Notice that "wearing"
harkens back to this notion of "unswept
stone besmeared with sluttish time" ...
this sense that ... time
corrupts. Time is not a positive force
here. Then we get to the conclusion, and
we have this poetic turn here with "so."
Shakespeare likes to do that. He sets up
a problem and then he solves it at the
end. And he says "So, till the Judgement
(the final judgment here) that
yourself arise (and that's when you arise
physically from the dead in order to be
judged by God) You live in this ..." And I
think you can guess what "this" is.
It's the poem. "You live in this and dwell
in lovers' eyes." Over time you might be
stuck in a grave in terms of your
physical body, but you live in the poem.
And as we said before, you are reflected
in lovers' eyes. They read the poem to
their beloved, you come alive again. and
you are being remembered. So is that a
clever argument. Is that something that
might persuade you? Well, I'd like to
finish with a couple of thoughts in
terms of whether this sonnet works or
not, and the first one has to do with
this question of who is the beloved?
Somebody is being loved here and
described, but who is this? Do we have any
description of this person in the sonnet?
Well, we don't. So then the next question
is "who is famous?" and this is a sonnet
that deals with this notion of immortalizing
someone. That's kind of the
technical term here. Can we immortalize
somebody through poetry?
I think the person who's really being
immortalized is not the beloved. It's
Shakespeare! Shakespeare we still
remember, but who is this person? Who's
being described? We don't truly know. So
it's kind of ironic then isn't it, and
Shakespeare seems a little bit more
manipulative than we might think at
first. He's using his beloved in order to
make himself famous. Maybe you're not
so happy about that ... And then the last
question to think about is what is the
worth of fame? Does fame even matte,r
because if we think of this final doom
here, what happens afterwards? Is
the poem worth anything in the afterlife?
Well, it only says "till the judgement," so
this is a poem that matters during the
time period when people are alive, and
that gives a kind of humanistic sense to
the poem. It matters in this life, but in
the larger scheme maybe it has less
significance, and so we have to question
this notion of fame as well, especially
from a Christian angle, which is what
some of these terms really bring up here.
Hopefully that lets you understand the
poem. There's probably lots more to talk
about, but at least it should give you a
good sense of the basics of Sonnet 55.