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Shakespeare's Sonnets |
| Section: MODERN THOUGHT / THE LOVE OF LANGUAGE: SCHOLARS WRITE ABOUT OPENING SENTENCES |
| Author: Aloysius O'Cessart |
| Publication: The world & I online |
| Issue Date: 6/1/1995 |
| Size: 738 Words, 4,406 Characters |
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From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's Rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease
His tender heir might bear his memory.
So begins the first sonnet in the famous Q (for quarto), the apparently unauthorized first (and only) edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets, published by Thomas Thorpe in 1609.
There is no history of the Sonnets, only conjecture about who they were addressed to and when they were written. And there was not even an acknowledgment by Shakespeare that he was, indeed,...
. . .
...other kind of immortality not lost upon those of aristocratic lineage.
Finally, it must be observed that "the riper should by time decease." The "riper," not the "older," will die, but "by time" and not "in time." Time is seen as an active cause, a power bringing about mutability, and it seems as if the world is a continuing struggle, not between good and evil, but between beauty and time.
(572 of 4,406 characters)
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