Sonnet 27
Sonnet 27 | |||||||
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Sonnet 27 is one of 154
Analysis
In Sonnet 27 the weary poet cannot find rest — not day or night. He goes to bed weary after working hard, which is the "toil" of line one, and the "travail" of line two. As soon as he lies down, another journey begins in his thoughts ("To work my mind") — the destination is the young man, who is far from where the poet is ("from far where I abide"). The poet's thoughts take that journey, and though he sees nothing but the darkness of night, his imagination presents to him an image of the young man, an image that seems to hang before him in the dark, like a jewel. This vision makes the "black night" beautiful — the word "black" is equated with ugliness and "night" has a feminine aspect. The reader is led to expect this vision to improve the poet's lot, but the final couplet suggests that it only adds to the restless misery of the weary poet, and "no quiet" can the poet find.[3][4]
Structure
Sonnet 27 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet, which consists of three quatrains followed by a final couplet. It follows the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, and is written in iambic pentameter, a metre in which each line has five feet, and each foot has two syllables accented weak/strong. Most of the lines are regular iambic pentameter including line three:
× / × / × / × / × / But then begins a journey in my head (27.3)
- / = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus.
Notes
- ISBN 9781408017975.
- ISBN 9781408017975.
- ISBN 9781408017975.
- ISBN 978-1-349-05443-5
References
- Baldwin, T. W. (1950). On the Literary Genetics of Shakspeare's Sonnets. University of Illinois Press, Urbana.
- Hubler, Edwin (1952). The Sense of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Princeton University Press, Princeton.
- Schoenfeldt, Michael (2007). The Sonnets: The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's Poetry. Patrick Cheney, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
- 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.
External links
- Works related to Sonnet 27 (Shakespeare) at Wikisource
- Paraphrase and analysis (Shakespeare-online)
- Analysis