Saturday, August 18, 2012

How should I recite Sonnet #12 by William Shakespeare? With passion? Or perhaps mournfully?I have to recite my sonnet in front of class with...

Shakespeare's Sonnet #12 (like many of his sonnets)
explores the troubling fact that beauty does not last
forever.


Shakespeare gives several examples of how time and
age spoil beauty, including:


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a) "the brave day" sinks into "hideous
night";


b) "lofty trees" become "barren of
leaves";


c) "summer's green [grass and grain] all girded up
in sheaves [bundles of dull-colored
hay]."



All of this leads the
poet to question the beauty of his beloved, because even she "among the wastes of time"
must eventually go.


I wouldn't say that you should recite
the poem in a mournful tone.  Rather, I would suggest a tone of
philosophical resignation, a tone that suggests I know this is tough but this
is how it is
.


The end of the poem could be
expressed with a touch of hopefulness, because there the poet finds one way out of the
grip of time:


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And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make
defence


Save
breed...



The word "breed"
here refers to children; by creating children, a person can obtain a sort of
eternity.


An important general note about reciting poetry: 
Do not pause at the end of a line, unless it ends with a comma or period.  In this poem,
that means that you should not pause at the end of line 13, because there is no comma or
period or comma
there.





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