Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,
When beauty liv’d and died as flowers do now,
Before these bastard signs of fair were born,
Or durst inhabit on a living brow;
Before the golden tresses of the dead,
The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,
To live a second life on second head;
Ere beauty’s dead fleece made another gay:
In him those holy antique hours are seen,
Without all ornament itself and true,
Making no summer of another’s green,
Robbing no old to dress his beauty new; And him as for a map doth Nature store, To show false Art what beauty was of yore.
Sonnet 68 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.
Structure[]
Sonnet 68 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form, abab cdcd efef gg and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The second line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:
× / × / × / × / × /
When beauty lived and died as flowers do now, (68.2)
The scansion of the eighth line is ambivalent. Normally the words "dead fleece" would have the stress of "dead" subordinated to that of "fleece", allowing them comfortably to fill × / positions, not / ×. However, if accent is placed on "dead", a regular scansion emerges:
× / × / × / × / × /
Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay: (68.8)
Alternatively, "fleece" can maintain the greater stress, suggesting this scansion:
× / × / / × × / × /
Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay: (68.8)
A reversal of the third ictus (as shown above) is normally preceded by at least a slight intonational break, which "dead fleece" does not allow. Peter Groves calls this a "harsh mapping", and recommends that in performance "the best thing to do is to prolong the subordinated S-syllable [here, "dead"] ... the effect of this is to throw a degree of emphasis on it".[2]
Groves, Peter (2013), Rhythm and Meaning in Shakespeare: A Guide for Readers and Actors, Melbourne: Monash University Publishing, ISBN978-1-921867-81-1
Rollins, Hyder Edward, ed. (1944). A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: The Sonnets [2 Volumes]. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. OCLC6028485.
Modern critical editions
Atkins, Carl D., ed. (2007). Shakespeare's Sonnets: With Three Hundred Years of Commentary. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN978-0-8386-4163-7. OCLC86090499.
Booth, Stephen, ed. (2000) [1st ed. 1977]. Shakespeare's Sonnets (Rev. ed.). New Haven: Yale Nota Bene. ISBN0-300-01959-9. OCLC2968040.
Burrow, Colin, ed. (2002). The Complete Sonnets and Poems. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0192819338. OCLC48532938.
Duncan-Jones, Katherine, ed. (2010) [1st ed. 1997]. Shakespeare's Sonnets. The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series (Rev. ed.). London: Bloomsbury. ISBN978-1-4080-1797-5. OCLC755065951.
Evans, G. Blakemore, ed. (1996). The Sonnets. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-0521294034. OCLC32272082.
Kerrigan, John, ed. (1995) [1st ed. 1986]. The Sonnets ; and, A Lover's Complaint. New Penguin Shakespeare (Rev. ed.). Penguin Books. ISBN0-14-070732-8. OCLC15018446.
Mowat, Barbara A.; Werstine, Paul, eds. (2006). Shakespeare's Sonnets & Poems. Folger Shakespeare Library. New York: Washington Square Press. ISBN978-0743273282. OCLC64594469.
Orgel, Stephen, ed. (2001). The Sonnets. The Pelican Shakespeare (Rev. ed.). New York: Penguin Books. ISBN978-0140714531. OCLC46683809.
Vendler, Helen, ed. (1997). The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN0-674-63712-7. OCLC36806589.
