Sonnet 113
Sonnet 113 | |||||||
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Sonnet 113 is one of
Synopsis
Since he left his beloved, the poet can think of nothing else. His eye no longer sees the outer world, only the image of the beloved. Birds, flowers and other forms cannot enter his mind since it is filled with the image of his love. Whatever he sees, ugly or beautiful, is transformed into the beloved, and so the perfect inner image makes his outer vision false.
Structure
Sonnet 113 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form ABAB CDCD EFEF GG and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The 11th line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:
× / × / × / × / × / The mountain or the sea, the day or night, (113.11)
Indeed, all fourteen lines may be scanned regularly, excepting the final extrametrical syllables or feminine endings in lines 10 and 12:
× / × / × / × / × / (×) The crow, or dove, it shapes them to your feature. (113.12)
- / = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus. (×) = extrametrical syllable.
The meter demands a few variant pronunciations: Line 4's "effectually" functions as four syllables, and line 6's "flower" as one.[2] There are also several contractions which are unusual to modern ears: Line 9's "rud'st" and line 10's "deformèd'st" of which Stephen Booth says, "[b]oth words demonstrate their sense; they are contorted alternatives for 'rudest' and 'most deformed'".[3] Finally, the Quarto's metrical "maketh mine" in line 14 is rejected by some editors, typically requiring an emendation with an unusual pronunciation, as for example Kerrigan's "mak'th mine eye",[4] or Booth's "maketh m'eyne" (m'eyne = "my eyes").[5]
Interpretations
- Zoe Waites, for the 2002 compilation album, When Love Speaks (EMI Classics)
Notes
- OCLC 4770201.
- ^ Booth 2000, pp. 373, 99.
- ^ Booth 2000, p. 374.
- ^ Kerrigan 1995, p. 133.
- ^ Booth 2000, p. 374-75.
References
- First edition and facsimile
- Shakespeare, William (1609). Shake-speares Sonnets: Never Before Imprinted. London: Thomas Thorpe.
- OCLC 458829162.
- Variorum editions
- OCLC 234756.
- Modern critical editions
- Atkins, Carl D., ed. (2007). Shakespeare's Sonnets: With Three Hundred Years of Commentary. Madison: OCLC 86090499.
- OCLC 2968040.
- Burrow, Colin, ed. (2002). The Complete Sonnets and Poems. OCLC 48532938.
- OCLC 32272082.
- OCLC 15018446.
- Mowat, Barbara A.; Werstine, Paul, eds. (2006). Shakespeare's Sonnets & Poems. OCLC 64594469.
- OCLC 46683809.
- OCLC 36806589.