Shakespeare's Sonnet 12 Case

The ticking of a clock, a day turning into night, skin beginning to develop wrinkles or hair turning from dark to white are all sensations created by the inevitable fact that time passes. This unavoidable passing of time is the theme of Shakespeare's sonnet 12, 'When I do count the clock'. Written in iambic pentameter and following a typical Shakespearian structure and end rhyme scheme (abab cdcd efef gg), it is concerned with the unavoidable way that time eventually leads every living thing into decay. The aim of this essay is to determine if time is portrayed as having an absolute power over human life in Shakespeare's 'When I do count the clock'. The essay is divided into four main parts: The first part consists of a general analysis of the form and content of the sonnet, the second part consists of a discussion of Helen Vendler's interpretation of the use of the term sweets and beauties in the sonnet, the third part consists of a discussion of Helen Vendler's view of three different ways of seeing death in the sonnet and the fourth part consists of a discussion of the use of the word brave.

There are 14 lines in the sonnet and they are divided into 3 quatrains with four lines in each and a concluding couplet. The first two quatrains are bound together by alliteration and are concerned with time putting an end to all life. The rhythm and iambic metre used in the sonnet, along with the clock described in the first line, provides the image of a ticking clock. This ticking clock is an image of time passing, which is basically the main theme of the poem. As time passes, every living creature eventually vanishes. An example of this can be seen in line 8 ('Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard:'), where wheat is carried away on a bier. A bier was a type of wagon also used for carrying the coffin at funerals, and the wheat is described as a 'white and bristly beard'. Therefore, the wheat can be seen as both wheat being carried away on a wagon and an old man being carried away in a coffin. This creates an image of time destroying not only human life, but every living organism in nature. The six last lines are concerned with time's way of decaying human life. The volta of the sonnet occurs before the concluding couplet, because the twelve first lines are dominated by a cynical and negative way of seeing time as having an absolute and devastating power over all life, while the concluding couplet offers procreation as a solution to defying time's supreme power of decay.

In Helen Vendler's The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets, she makes the point that the most noteworthy phrase in the sonnet is the phrase sweets and beauties, which occurs in line 11 ('Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake'). Sweets are an image of inward virtue, and beauties are an image of outward show . In other words, sweets are good things and beauties are good looking things. Fading beauties such as the violet past prime, sable curls silvered o'er with white and summer's green all girded up in sheaves, are used clearly and repeatedly in the sonnet, whereas the sweets are not used as noticeably. In line 9 ('Then of thy beauty do I question make') it seems implied that the young man of the sonnet is merely an aesthetic object, but Helen Vendler argues that the sweets and beauties in line 11 are intended to summarize and illuminate what has gone before this line . Objects of obvious beauty suddenly gain a new purpose by adding sweets to them. For example, lines 5 and 6 ('When lofty trees I see barren of leaves, / Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,') are about tall trees of obvious beauty that lose their leaves and therefore lose their ability to provide animals with shade. Beside from the clear fading of beauty, the trees go through; they also lose a useful ability to shelter animals from heat. If sweets are applied to the trees, they become a moral subject, and when they lose their leaves, they are no longer kind to the herd of animals, which makes them lose a strange form of compassion. Just as with the trees, sweets can be applied to the young man of the sonnet which then makes him both an aesthetic and virtuous object. This illustrates that the speaker of the sonnet is not only