Reading and interpretation - Essay Example

Joo-Hyon Kim, in the book, “Bi-Cultural Critical Essays on Shakespeare” commented rightly that, “ Shakespeare’s sonnets look like a string of multi-coloured gems which reflect human passions and sadness, and a close observation will also discover some lovely gems sparkling with Christian love which gives a new hope and strength to us sinners”1. Sonnet 138 by Shakespeare is one such colourful gems sparkling and glorifying his literary activity since ages. Published in the year 1559, by William Jaggard the sonnet no.

138 made its first appearance in a collection of poems around twenty in number published under the name entitled, ‘The Passionate Pilgrimage’. Close Reading: Sonnet 138 One of the most celebrated sonnets of Shakespeare is Sonnet 18, “Shall I Compare Thee to a summer’s Day” and there appears an eternal line glorifying the philosophy of Shakespeare on age and its relationship with beauty. Shakespeare eludes in his sonnet, “And every fair from fair sometime declines,  By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d”2. . and put stress on the philosophy of the growth of age and its directly proportional relation with beauty and vitality of sexual relationship and romance in humans.

Sonnet 138 is paradoxical sonnet to Sonnet 137. In the previous sonnet, poet has a firm faith upon her mistress that she is alone though his mind is not ready to affirm his belief. Centring around the word, ‘lie’ poet uses his meticulous skills of pun to assure the fact that he is been deceived by his mistress and hinges on the fact that his mistress is having liaisons with some other man. The sonnet opens with a kind of hope that suggests that the relation should have enough space for patching up once again; a fear of growing age pervades the poem and eclipses the mind of the poet which arises a feeling of losing his beloved due to his growing age, consequently he demands the women to swear that she is true and not cheating him anymore.

Sonnet 138 is a sonnet of a Shakespeare’s dark lady series. The sonnets of the dark lady series captivate a woman with dark eyes and dark hair. The analysis of Sonnet 138 anatomically shall launch to the definite inference that the sonnet is a typical example of Shakespearean sonnet. It contains a regular three quatrains and a rhyming couplet at the end. The rhyming scheme of the sonnet is mostly iambic pentameter with variations at scarce places. Apart from the rhetoric device of pun, the poet uses ample metaphors and anticlimactic elements to generate the element of surprise and develop the strophic sense of the poem.

Thematically, the poem is an obvious deviation from the conventional love poems of Shakespeare from the Dark Lady Series. At the outset of the sonnet itself, the readers shall have to pass through a pungent wry humour that is produced from a