Topic > Free Essays on Shakespeare's Sonnet 5 - 363

Analysis of Sonnet 5Those hours which with sweetness have framedThe amiable gaze where every eye dwellsShall be tyrants to the same, And that unjust one who justly excels:For never- the time of rest leads the summer to the horrible winter and there it confuses it, the sap restrained by the frost, and the lush leaves all but gone, the beauty covered with snow and the nakedness everywhere: then there would not have remained the distillation of the summer a captive liquid repressed in glass walls, the beauty the effect with the beauty was private, neither ir nor any memory of what it was. But the distilled flowers, though they meet with winter, Leese but their show: their substance still lives sweet. This sonnet is quite easy to read and understand, but there are some subtle ways in which Shakespeare makes it more interesting. First, the "which" in line 4 appears to mean "that," but when read aloud a play on words arises that allows it to be substituted for "witch." This is definitely an option when referring to “Those Hours,” significant of time, as seeing time as a witch. Shakespeare does not hold time in high regard, and so we get a slightly modified reading of line 4: “and that unjust witch hasten thy growing age by just means.” In this reading, time is both fair and unfair, much appreciated when a child received his deserved punishment. 5-6: 'The "time that never rests" always pushes summer into winter, where summer is unhappily detained'; 7-8: 'Where the sap is frost-ridden, and the leaves of the tree have faded, the beauty being everywhere too overcast and barren:'. 9-12: 'At that time summer was remembered through perfumes, (but) the effect of beauty [perfume] was attenuated through perfumes [perfume is there, but aesthetics have disappeared], and there was no memory of what it actually was'.