Monday, January 23, 2012
Shakespeare's "Sonnet 116"
After analyzing Shakespeare's "Sonnet 116" I believe the message is that two individuals should not be prevented from marriage because love stands firmly through time, beauty, and troubles and that if he is proven wrong then no one has ever loved. I find line 10 the most difficult to understand "Within his bending sickle's compass come". I know a sickle is a type of knife but I'm not sure how it relates to a compass or what it has to do with the line before.
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Good question. If you look at line 10, next to 'his' there is a footnote, 7. Look on the bottom of the page,to find out what/whom does the pronoun, his, refer to.
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking about this since you posted the question. I don't think that the speaker refers to a knife but possibly means that he is not able to control his romantic feelings. Compass, I believe, also means a range, so perhaps he is confused about the strength of the range of his emotions, that are so strong that it feels like he is being "stabbed".... perhaps this is a far fetched analysis...
ReplyDeleteSirkku, we can explore this interpretation in class. But I'd like to draw your attention to the words and the sentence that makes up the lines we are discussing here. The speaker says: "Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks/Within his bending sickle's compass come;"(Shakespeare 9-10). The pronoun 'his' in line 10 refers to time. Think about why love and time are capitalizied.
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