William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is now commonly regarded as the greatest dramatist of all time. Within his plays and poems he observed and described various themes, but today I want to take a look at his views and relationship with beauty by analysing his various sonnets.
Sonnet 1
This is the first sonnet, setting the tone for the entire collection. In the first four lines Shakespeare describes the central idea and places beauty in the frame of procreation: claiming the only way to carry on beauty is to reproduce. In the second half, we follow a young man who was too self-obsessed (‘with self-substantial fuel’) to consider having children to pass along his beautiful genes. In this way, the world will be deprived of beauty at his eventual death. In the end the poet pleads the man to change his ways and ‘pity the world’. The message of the poem is very clear, beauty is not to be withheld from the world, we should not get wrapped up in being so self absorbed to the point that the actual beauty itself loses meaning.
Sonnet 18
Sonnet 18 is one of Shakespeare's most prolific sonnets, opening with the infamous “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”. The work then devotes itself to this very comparison, the beautiful man to a summer's day, it is generally considered to be a love poem. Although, the poem strives to communicate a little more; the power poetry holds over beauty, because now, the beauty is immortalised by the author's very words. So of course, the poem also addresses ageing and the cruelty of life and nature. Once again, the very nature of beauty is tied to the preservation of it. The poem can truly be inspiring from a point of view, motivating you to write and immortalise whatever it is you find beautiful like a summer's day.
Sonnet 54
With the opening ‘O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem’ it is, of course, a poem about beauty. The central idea is that beauty needs to be aligned with morals/principals of integrity and truth. We are introduced to two different flowers; the first flower (a rose) is fair but also truthful and has clearly more to it than just its beautiful exterior. The second flower is similar in form to the rose but very different in virtue. Ultimately, the rose prevails over this second flower who dies alone. Shakespeare is very clear with his message, beauty must be backed up by morality for it to be real beauty.
Sonnet 65
Once again, Shakespeare returns to the themes explored in ‘Sonnet 18’ and generally in the entire collection; the concept of beauty being immortalised by poetry and the influence time has on beauty. He compares beauty to a flower, helpless and defenceless against the feat of ‘sad mortality’ and he wonders if the beauty of his lover could possibly last forever. He concludes the poem with a rather frightening but repetitious realisation, time is beauty’s enemy and there is simply nothing the poet can do about it.
Sonnet 127
In this poem the concept of beauty is looked at from a different perspective. Shakespeare begins by commenting on how times have changed and how previously being fair was considered more beautiful but now even darkness is more appreciated and considered to be legitimate beauty. Subsequently he takes a strong stance against the makeup utilised at the time, giving women, according to him, ''Nature's power'' and masking who is really beautiful and who is not. Finally he comments on how gorgeous his mistress is with her dark eyes (and possibly dark skin!) and how he believes she is impacting how people are now perceiving the entire concept of beauty itself.
Conclusion
In this day and age the concept of what is beautiful or not is so warped by social media, plastic surgery, our incessant fear of aging (Shakespeare gets it), complex 10 step anti-aging skincare routines, clean beauty, advertising and so much more. In light of this I wanted to explore what beauty meant to such a prolific writer in hopes of stunning verses about nature and beauty, but I fear we may not differ by Shakespeare so much. His fear of beauty being belittled by time and wrinkles was strong just like ours is now but we as a society must break away from the shackles of this concept now so long instilled within us. Never forget, aging is a privilege.
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