"O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power / Dost hold Time's fickle glass, his sickle, hour;"
Oh you, my lovely boy, who hold in your power Time's fickle hourglass (or mirror), his sickle, and his very hours;
"Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st / Thy lovers withering as thy sweet self grow'st;"
You who have grown as your youth has declined; meanwhile, your lovers have withered as your sweet self grows;
"If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack / As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back,"
If Nature, the controller of destruction, will continue to keep you back in the sweetness of youth even as you age,
"She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill / May time disgrace and wretched minutes kill."
She is keeping you for a reason, so that her power may disgrace time and cancel the wretched effects of time.
"Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure! / She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure:"
But fear her, oh you servant of her pleasure! She may delay the decline of aging, but she cannot keep your youthful beauty forever:
"Her audit, though delay'd, answer'd must be / And her quietus is to render thee."
Time's reckoning, though delayed, must still be settled, and her reconciliation will be to give you up.
Why is he saying it?
Unique in the sequence, Sonnet 126 is actually not a sonnet at all, but rather a verse of six rhyming couplets adding up to twelve lines. Nevertheless it is still possible to analyze this "sonnet" quatrain by quatrain, since each four-line block constitutes its own thematic unit within the overall theme of the fair lord's preternatural resilience to the ravages of time. The attitude of the sonnet is not jealousy, as we might expect, but rather admonition: the fair lord's resistance to time's destructive force is ironically (or sadly) just a temporary blessing.
In the first quatrain, the narrator admires his "lovely boy" for the superhuman power he seems to possess over Time's various instruments of destruction. "Time's fickle glass" in line 2 may be an hourglass, but it could also be a mirror - for a mirror shows the present, unlike a picture that shows the past, and thereby a mirror shows the changes that have taken place with time. For the fair lord, however, these changes have yet to detract from his beauty, as lines 3-4 show: "Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st / Thy lovers withering as thy sweet self grow'st."
The second quatrain identifies Nature as the fair lord's generous accomplice, for it is Nature that has granted him his resilience against time by continually rescuing him from time's destruction. This comes as little surprise, if we have read in sonnet 20 that Nature has been in love with the fair lord all along. She therefore saves him presumably for her own gratification, as we see in the opening of quatrain three: "O thou minion of her pleasure!"
The final quatrain delimits the fair lord's specious immortality, as line 10 warns that Nature "may detain, but not still keep, her treasure." His fate is forever sealed in lines 11-12, one last example of financial imagery in the fair lord sonnets, where Nature's "audit" of life and death must be reconciled by the eventual termination of the fair lord's earthly figure: "Her audit, though delay'd, answer'd must be / And her quietus is to render thee." (The words "quietus est" were written atop acknowledgments of settled debts.) The power of Nature may be great, but it is unable to withstand the ravages of time indefinitely.
One of the most heated debates surrounding the collection of Shakespeare's sonnets is the question of what deeper significance, if any, is to be found in their ordering and internal structure. How deliberate is the ordering of the sequence, and to what extent are we able to divide the sonnets into groupings and subgroupings? As mentioned elsewhere in this ClassicNote, the primary division most scholars make comes between the fair lord sonnets (1-126) and the dark lady sonnets (127-154). Sonnet 126 is often viewed as the definitive breaking point, for its aberrant "non-sonnet" structure seems to be evidence of the poet's insertion of these lines as an explicit "curtains close," or at least as some sort of meaningful interlude. Sonnet 126 is the narrator's final farewell to the fair lord and also his final admonition, reminiscent of the prophetic epigram of sonnet 60, that Time "Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth / And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow."
Sonnet's 99 and 126
Sonnet 18- Shall I Compare Thee to A Summer's Day? These four are also some of Shakespeare's most popular sonnets Sonnet 029 - When in disgrace with fortune Sonnet 116 - Let me not to the marriage of true minds Sonnet 126 - O thou my lovely boy Sonnet 130 - My Mistress' eyes
Most of the short poems in the publication, Shakespeare's Sonnets were of the same length, 14 lines, and contained a minimum of 140 syllables. However, Sonnet 126 contains only 12 lines and around 120 syllables; Sonnet 145 contains a full 14 lines but only some 112 syllables.
We cannot say with certainty. However, there is considerable evidence to suggest that all the poems in Sonnets 1-126 were addressed to Shakespeare's patron, Henry Wriothesley. In Sonnet 55 he appears to continue his flattery of the Earl through a recurring theme of immortality through verse (picked up here from the closing lines of the preceding sonnet). Read more in the link below.
There are at least three sonnets in Romeo and Juliet. The prologue to Act One is a sonnet, as is the prologue to Act Two. Romeo and Juliet also create a unique two person sonnet in Act One, Scene Five starting where Romeo says "If I profane with my unworthiest hand" (Romeo 1.5.91) and ending with "Then move not while my prayer's effect I take" (Romeo 1.5.104).
Sonnet's 99 and 126
Sonnet 18- Shall I Compare Thee to A Summer's Day? These four are also some of Shakespeare's most popular sonnets Sonnet 029 - When in disgrace with fortune Sonnet 116 - Let me not to the marriage of true minds Sonnet 126 - O thou my lovely boy Sonnet 130 - My Mistress' eyes
Most of the short poems in the publication, Shakespeare's Sonnets were of the same length, 14 lines, and contained a minimum of 140 syllables. However, Sonnet 126 contains only 12 lines and around 120 syllables; Sonnet 145 contains a full 14 lines but only some 112 syllables.
We cannot say with certainty. However, there is considerable evidence to suggest that all the poems in Sonnets 1-126 were addressed to Shakespeare's patron, Henry Wriothesley. In Sonnet 55 he appears to continue his flattery of the Earl through a recurring theme of immortality through verse (picked up here from the closing lines of the preceding sonnet). Read more in the link below.
There are at least three sonnets in Romeo and Juliet. The prologue to Act One is a sonnet, as is the prologue to Act Two. Romeo and Juliet also create a unique two person sonnet in Act One, Scene Five starting where Romeo says "If I profane with my unworthiest hand" (Romeo 1.5.91) and ending with "Then move not while my prayer's effect I take" (Romeo 1.5.104).
Shakespeare's first 126 sonnets are addressed to a young man, often referred to as the Fair Youth. The poems explore themes of friendship, love, and the passage of time.
Shakespeare's sonnets are a collection of 154 poems that explore themes of love, beauty, time, and mortality. They are divided into two main parts: the first 126 sonnets are directed to a young man, while the remaining sonnets focus on a dark lady. These sonnets are known for their intricate language, deep emotional expression, and poetic beauty.
Most of the 'Fair Youth' sonnets (approximately 1 - 126) are addressed to an unmarried young man. Their usual argument is: 'you are so beautiful that you need to get married, and raise children; beautiful people who never marry leave nothing of their beauty behind on earth after they die'. But sonnet 18 breaks this pattern, since it says that the Fair Youth's beauty will live on long after his death in Shakespeare's poem. Since Shakespeare's poem is referencing the far distant future (long after both the Fair Youth and Shakespeare have died) - it is inevitable that the poem will talk about future time (this isn't really foreshadowing, the poem is directly referencing a future state beyond itself). But as usual, Shakespeare is messing with us. Sonnet 18 talks about beauty, and preserves the beauty it talks about for all time (or at least, for well over 400 years). But we don't know who the Fair Youth is. So the poem is being less than honest with us.
Yes in some ways. William was a straight forward man. He was not gay that we know of. He was married and had three children with Anne Hathaway. Although he was married he referred to a young man in 126 of his sonnets which were commonly about love. Many people think this was about his love for a younger man. Although actual sexual relations between men were frowned on and severely punished, deep and powerful affections between men were acceptable and encouraged. The fact that Shakespeare expresses affection for another man is not necessarily an indication that he was homosexual.
126?
Shakespeare's sonnets are divided into 154 poems, typically categorized into two main groups: the Fair Youth sonnets and the Dark Lady sonnets. The Fair Youth sonnets (1-126) are addressed to a young man, expressing themes of beauty, love, and mortality. The Dark Lady sonnets (127-154) shift focus to a mysterious woman, exploring themes of desire and betrayal. Each sonnet follows a specific structure, usually the Shakespearean (or English) form, consisting of three quatrains followed by a final rhymed couplet.
The LCM is 126.