Sonnet 55

Shakespeare’s major goal in “Sonnet 55” is to immortalize the fair youth through poetry.

One way Shakespeare expresses this focus on the fair youth’s ability to outlive death is through the language he uses in the poem, particularly the repetition of the word “live.” Shakespeare first uses the word “live” in Line 2 when he says his subject will outlive the monuments of princes. He repeats the word in Line 8 when he describes the poem as the “living memory” of his subject. More subtly, Shakespeare then writes “‘Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity” (Line 9). This line is ironic because Shakespeare encodes the word “live” in the word “oblivious,” and the line describes the force that threatens the youth’s memory (death) while expressing the idea that this enemy will not defeat the youth, as he will “pace forth” (Line 10). Finally, the final line of the poem reads, “You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes” (Line 14). The repetition of the word live throughout the poem—and especially at the beginning and end of it—alerts us to Shakespeare’s thematic concerns in the sonnet. While the poem uses the imagery of things that are destroyed (monuments) and things that destroy (war), these things are used simply to show their insignificance to the life the poem celebrates and immortalizes.

Shakespeare is unique in the sense that he wrote sonnets that sought to immortalize others instead of himself, but “Sonnet 55” is not the first poem to do this. He most famously does the same thing at the end of “Sonnet 18,” when he argues that his description of the fair youth’s beauty will outlive a summer day because Shakespeare has recorded the beauty in the poem. “Sonnet 55” makes the exact same case, though he claims this early in the poem instead of at the end as he does in “Sonnet 18.” Line 3 establishes Shakespeare’s ultimate premise: “But you shall shine more bright in these contents.” “These contents” refers to the poem itself. Shakespeare opens with this claim and contrasts it to the bombastic “gilded monuments / of princes” (Lines 1-2) that will not outlive “this rhyme” (Line 2). There is a certain kind of arrogance in Shakespeare’s tone here, as well as a pointed attack on some of the royalty of the day and their tendency to build themselves outlandish tombs. That Shakespeare can claim his pen will outlive the works of kings is a bold statement in a time when people saw the king as the most powerful person in the world.

But it’s not just kings that won’t outlive the poem. Shakespeare also claims that war will not be able to ravage the memory he has created in his lines. Shakespeare compares the immortality of his poem to the fickle life of something that can be destroyed in war like a building, statue, or monument. He says that “Mars his sword […] war’s quick fire” (Line 7) can easily destroy these things but have no effect on the poem. This line can bring to mind a number of historical or literary images, but the line can best be exemplified by the example of the Trojan War. While the war destroyed the famed walls of Troy and left the ancient city in ruin, Homer’s poem The Iliad survives, and it is all we have left from that place. In the same way that The Iliad has given a certain kind of immortality to the characters of the Trojan War, Shakespeare believes his poem gives immortality to the fair youth.

Lastly, even time itself has no power over the poem. While time, which Shakespeare describes as “sluttish” (Line 4), may wither away the names carved on a gravestone and wash out the names of history in blood, the words Shakespeare writes in this poem will grow in their beauty, undisturbed by time. This is because, unlike a physical structure, the written word is easily moved from person to person and place to place. It is much harder to destroy ideas and words than it is to destroy physical objects. Shakespeare is so confident in this that he says this will be the case until the Last Judgement at the end of time.

This theme of the written word outliving time is a common idea in Shakespeare’s works, as well as in the works of other authors of the time. What is unique to Shakespeare is that he is using this idea to suggest that his written words give immortality to another person, not to himself. The tradition before Shakespeare was for poets to declare themselves immortal because of their ability to exist past their death through their writing. That being said, because we do not know the identity of the fair youth and because Shakespeare is the one who has been remembered and glorified, there is a bit of irony here. In trying to immortalize his subject, Shakespeare actually immortalized himself. One has to wonder if this was intentional.

One final idea worth exploring is Shakespeare’s use of gender in the sonnet. While the poem is dedicated to the fair youth (a man), Shakespeare personifies time as a woman. We know this because the word “sluttish” (Line 4) was, in Shakespeare’s day, typically used as an insult to women. This is worth noting because it again shows how unique this sonnet was at the time. Whereas most sonnets were about women and served to glorify them, Shakespeare’s sonnet connects women to death—something that seeks to besmear the monuments of the past constructed by men. This contrast between men and women becomes even more prominent when considering the sonnets as a collective unit. Shakespeare’s subject in almost all of the sonnets is the fair youth, but he later introduces the character of the dark lady, who stands in direct contrast to the youthful man. The introduction of a personified feminine death in “Sonnet 55” foreshadows more negative imagery to come.