Sonnet 68

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Sonnet 68 in the 1609 Quarto
Q1 Q2 Q3 C Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn, When beauty liv’d and died as flowers do now, Before these bastard signs of fair were born, Or durst inhabit on a living brow; Before the golden tresses of the dead, The right of sepulchres, were shorn away, To live a second life on second head; Ere beauty’s dead fleece made another gay: In him those holy antique hours are seen, Without all ornament itself and true, Making no summer of another’s green, Robbing no old to dress his beauty new; And him as for a map doth Nature store, To show false Art what beauty was of yore. 4 8 12 14 —William Shakespeare[1]

Sonnet 68 is one of

sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.

Structure

Sonnet 68 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 second line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:

  ×   /   ×  /    ×    /   ×    /      ×  / 
When beauty lived and died as flowers do now, (68.2)

/ = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus.

The scansion of the eighth line is ambivalent. Normally the words "dead fleece" would have the stress of "dead" subordinated to that of "fleece", allowing them comfortably to fill × / positions, not / ×. However, if accent is placed on "dead", a regular scansion emerges:

×    /   ×    /     ×     /   × /  ×   / 
Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay: (68.8)

Alternatively, "fleece" can maintain the greater stress, suggesting this scansion:

×    /   ×    /     /     ×   × /  ×   / 
Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay: (68.8)

A reversal of the third ictus (as shown above) is normally preceded by at least a slight intonational break, which "dead fleece" does not allow. Peter Groves calls this a "harsh mapping", and recommends that in performance "the best thing to do is to prolong the subordinated S-syllable [here, "dead"] ... the effect of this is to throw a degree of emphasis on it".^[2]

Notes

Further reading

• Groves, Peter (2013), Rhythm and Meaning in Shakespeare: A Guide for Readers and Actors, Melbourne: Monash University Publishing,
  ISBN 978-1-921867-81-1

First edition and facsimile

• Shakespeare, William (1609). Shake-speares Sonnets: Never Before Imprinted. London: Thomas Thorpe.
• OCLC 458829162
  .

Variorum editions

• OCLC 234756
  .
• OCLC 6028485. — Volume I and Volume II at the Internet Archive

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 755065951. — 1st edition at the Internet Archive
• OCLC 32272082
  .
• OCLC 15018446
  .
• Mowat, Barbara A.; Werstine, Paul, eds. (2006). Shakespeare's Sonnets & Poems.
  OCLC 64594469
  .
• OCLC 46683809
  .
• OCLC 36806589
  .