Sonnet 70
Sonnet 70 | |||||||
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Sonnet 70 is one of
Synopsis
Q1 The Speaker assures a young man that accusations against him do not actually harm him, because beauty is always a target ("mark") for slander. Q2 In fact, slander only verifies the worth of the good, as it seeks to be attached to the very best, as (the Speaker claims) the young man is. Q3 The young man has made it this far, either avoiding or triumphing over vice, yet this praise is insufficient to "tie up envy", which always increases. C "[I]f a hint or suspicion of badness did not disguise your true appearance, entire nations would be in thrall to you."[2]
Structure
Sonnet 70 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 fourth line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:
× / × / × / × / × / A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air. (70.4)
- / = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus.
The meter demands a few variant pronunciations: The first and third lines' rhyming words, "defect" and "suspect" are both stressed on the second syllable.[3] Though it is uncertain how contracted words like this might have been in Elizabethan pronunciation, line ten's "either" functions as one syllable, and might have been pronounced as one.[4]
Notes
- OCLC 4770201.
- ^ Kerrigan 1995, p. 262.
- ^ Kerrigan 1995, p. 262.
- ^ Abbot, E. A. (1870). A Shakespearean Grammar (3rd ed.). London: Macmillan and Company. pp. 347–48 (§466).
Further reading
- 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.