Literary Analysis Of Shakespeare’s Sonnet “That Time Of Year Thou May’st In Me Behold”
Shakespeare’s “That time of year thou may’st in me behold” is a lyrical poem written in Shakespearean sonnet style. It has fourteen lines divided into three quatrains and a couplet, each having its own rhyme scheme of ABAB, rhyming in alternative lines. Shakespeare’s speaker uses a series of metaphors and images in the first twelve lines to describe his aging and how he’s getting closer to death; the couplet at the end of the poem renews Shakespeare’s plea and urges the unknown audience to show more love to the speaker because the speaker is old and will die soon. Shakespeare uses his creativity in this poem in the way that each quatrain brings a new set of images: autumn turning into winter in the first quatrain, the twilight in the second quatrain, and the embrace of the fire in the third quatrain.
Shakespeare uses a series of metaphors to imply the speaker’s old age. The speaker compares his old age to the world surrounding him to create a set of images in the reader’s mind, such that the reader has a deeper understanding. The speaker compares his life to a season in the first quatrain. If a person were to only look at the first quatrain, the speaker seems to describe autumn as he mentions: “Yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang”. However, after acknowledging the theme of the whole poem, he seems to describe his life like winter; he emphasizes on the harshness of old age as he mentions: “Upon those boughs which shake against the cold”; he also describes the hollowness of his age using imagery when he writes, “Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang”. Winter is the last season in a year cycle which relates to the theme of the poem in a way that the speaker also has a short time left before his death. In the second quatrain, the metaphor shifts to the twilight when the sun slowly sets and the sky gets darker; it emphasizes on the gradual aging in life when he says, “As after sunset fadeth in the west”. He also compares the darkness after the sunset to death by calling it “Death’s second self”. The twilight represents the light of youth, and the darkness represents death; with using this metaphor, he’s trying to imply that he’s getting closer to death as the darkness overcomes the light in the sky at sunset.
The speaker uses personification to create a stronger image in the reader’s mind. In the third quatrain, he compares his life to a glowing fire inside his body when he says: “In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire”. The fire inside him uses his youth as the fuel which over time, makes the fire burn into ashes that lies beneath the fire. When there are no more fuel to keep the fire burning, it would die on its own ashes. He personifies the fire by giving it a human characteristic when he states that the fire inside him dies on the “deathbed”ю When he says, “That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,/As the deathbed whereon it must expire”, he’s trying to imply that fire also has a cycle; fire starts glowing when the wood burns meanwhile, the burnt wood turns into ashes and by the time that all the wood burns, fire dies on the ashes made from the same wood that made the fire glow. The same thing applies to human: humans start to live with youth and by the time they get older, they die when there is no more youth in them.
By taking a closer look at the poem, we can find a cycle in each quatrain that gets briefer and also the speaker gets closer to the end of the cycles as we move toward the end of the poem: in the first quatrain, the speaker compares his life to winter which has a monthly cycle; in the second quatrain, he compares his life to the sunset which has a twenty-four-hour cycle, and in the third quatrain, he compares his life to an embracing fire that can die on its ashes in any minute.
This poem is written in Shakespearean sonnet style. The ideas in a Shakespearean sonnet usually are organized in a particular way across the fourteen lines of a sonnet which are also divided into four sections: the first three sections rhyming in ABAB and the last section rhyming in GG. The first three sections have four lines and are called quatrains and the last section has only two parts and it’s known as the couplet. This way of organization allows each quatrain have a different idea and which the couplet sums up these ideas. In this poem, there is a different idea in each quatrain, but all of them are variations of the central theme of aging that is expressed by creating a different image in each quatrain. In this poem, Shakespeare adds his touch to the couplet by introducing the theme of love.
Sonnets follow the iambic pentameter form however, Shakespeare uses his techniques in this poem and mixes the meter in some lines to emphasize on particular words; we can see the change in meter in line thirteen: “This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong”. He’s adding emphasize on “This” which helps the reader to connect the theme of the quatrains, aging, to the theme of the couplet, love. Shakespeare uses other techniques such as allusion and alliteration to express stronger emotions. An allusion is a figure of speech in which the author refers to an unrelated context in a way that helps the audience make a stronger connection with the poem. In this poem, Shakespeare uses allusion in line four when the speaker is describing winter: “Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang”. This line refers to how King Henry the 8th broke down all the Catholic churches in England and it shows the speaker’s weakness in his old ages; however, the audience back in the years that this poem was written could make a stronger connection with this allusion.
Another figure of speech that the author uses in this poem is alliteration; alliteration is the occurrence of the same letter in words close to each other. Shakespeare uses alliteration in line fourteen to emphasize on the strong and positive emotion at the end of the poem: “To love that well which thou must leave ere long”. We can see alliteration on several sounds which focuses reader’s attention on this particular line and helps to convey the emotional message stronger.
The author of this poem uses several figures of speech to help the audience better understand the speaker’s descriptions on his old age as he compares his life to cycles surrounding him in nature. In human life, however, the fading of youth and aging doesn’t end in a cycle, and youth will never come back to the speaker, so he’s trying to tell a second person that there’s not much time left before he dies and before long the second person has to show more love to the speaker as if he won’t be able to talk to him for a long time. The speaker believes that love triumphs over many difficulties, yet it’s still limited by nature and morality.
