Sonnet 124 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which a poet expresses his love towards a young man.
Overview This sonnet observes the poet's personal transition on his interpretation of love. The speaker is no longer referring to "Fair Youth" when he utters the word 'love'. Rather, the poet has come to realize his own shortsightedness in his obsession with youth's materialism. The materialism of youth demonstrates the large issue at hand for this sonnet, the political and human state.
References to the political world of Shakespeare's time are littered throughout this sonnet. As literary scholar Murray Krieger states "Shakespeare is not likely to overlook the possibilities of metaphorical extension".[Krieger, Murray. "A Window to Criticism: Shakespeare's Sonnets and Modern Poetics". Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1964: p. 140] The idea of that state is held highly in this sonnet, "primarily it functions in the majestic world of sovereignty, the summit of political hierarchy".[Krieger, p. 140] The poet, however, realizes the fragility of the state as even the state is "subject to Time's love or to Time's hate" (124.3). The English state during Shakespeare's life was ruled by Queen Elizabeth, who was regarded as high in virtue, intelligence and status.[Felch, Susan M., Stump, Donald. "Elizabeth I and Her Age". New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 1st Edition. 2009] However, throughout Europe political assassinations ruled the continent and Elizabeth was not exempt. She continually evaded numerous attempts at her life.[Hotson, Leslie, "Mr. W.H." New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1964: 96]. The sonnet extends out from the state as a political feature to "envelop the contingencies of the human condition, the generic 'accident' of line 5".[Krieger, Murray. "A Window to Criticism: Shakespeare's Sonnets and Modern Poetics". Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1964: 141] Shakespeare does this to show the linkages between the physical state of a nation as well as the 'state' of it populous. Once the speaker demonstrates this link, "'state' and 'accident' are finally one, so that the instabilities of the political condition may be read back into the human state at large – or at least the human state without love" [Krieger, p. 141]. This suggests that the harshness of the state is created by the harshness of its people.
Structure Sonnet 124 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 6th line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter: × / × / × / × / × / It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls (124.6) Many metrical variants occur in this poem. Line 4 contains two of the most common: an initial reversal and a final extrametrical syllable or feminine ending: / × × / × / × / × / (×) Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gather'd. (124.4) / = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus. (×) = extrametrical syllable.
Line 2 (as required by the rhyme scheme) also has a feminine ending. An initial reversal also occurs in line 7, with potential initial reversals occurring in lines 5, 11, and 12.
Line 3 contains two occurrences of the rightward movement of an ictus (resulting in a four-position figure, × × / /, sometimes referred to as a minor ionic): × / × × / / × × / / As subject to Time's love or to Time's hate, (124.3) Minor ionics are also potentially present in lines 1 and 10.
The meter demands a few variant pronunciations: in line 4 "flowers" first functions as one, then as two syllables. Line 7's "thrallèd" is two syllables, and line 8's "th'inviting" is three.
This sonnet's form, like many other of Shakespeare's sonnets, uses the two-part structure of a typical Petrarchan sonnet in which, "eight lines are logically or metaphorically set against the last six [and] an octave-generalization will be followed by a particular sestet-application, an octave question will be followed by a sestet answer or at least a quatrain answer before the summarizing couplet".Vendler, Helen. The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Cambridge, MA: Belknap of Harvard UP, 1997. Print. In Sonnet 124 the volta occurs in the eleventh and twelfth line, though arguable there could be two voltas in this sonnet—as there are at least two times in the poem where a new phrase of ideas is put forth. The first quatrain describes what the speakers' love would be like if it was simply a result of circumstance. There is then a change in thought as the second quatrain begins to attack the fickle state of the world in which the speaker and addressee reside where there is a lack of enduring resolve found wanting in politics, love, and fashion. The third quatrain continues with the description of the heretical society in which they live, but then presents the idea that the speaker's love "alone stands" against time, which is then supported by the appeal to witnesses in the ending couplet.
Context
Shakespeare places Sonnet 124 towards the end of the Fair Youth section of sonnets which are addressed to or concern a young man. Over the course of this first section the speaker "tells a 'high' story of devotion, in the course of which the poet discovers that the reality of his love is the love itself rather than anything he receives from the beloved".[Hubler, Edward, Northrop Frye, Leslie A. Fielder, Stephen Spender, and R.P. Blackmur "The Riddle of Shakespeare's Sonnets". First Edition. New York: Basic Books Inc., 1962: p 38] Shakespeare accomplishes this through a three cycled love phase witnessed within this "Fair Youth" section. The first cycle sees the poet being confident in "Youth's" love, where the poet "feels that his genius as a poet is being released by [youth's love]".[Hubler, p. 40] However, as this first cycle is completed and the second begins, youth has taken the poet's mistress and has created a rival poet. This causes the poet to become focused on his own old age and his love's winter. The final cycle witnesses the poet's rebirth, where in Sonnet 97 "a great rush of coming-of-spring images" [Hubler, p. 41] flood the poem. This final portion of the poet's love cycle is where Sonnet 124 is positioned. Within this final section "[The poet] replaces reproach with self-reproach, or, more accurately, he replaces disillusionment with self-knowledge, and gradually finds the possession of what he has struggled for, not in the youth as a separate person, but in the love that unites him with the youth".
Another alternate contextual interpretation of this sonnet can be explained by Leslie Hotson. In the previous sonnet, 123, the speaker addresses time by stating "Thy pyramids built up with newer might / To me are nothing novel".[Hotson, Leslie, "Mr. W.H." New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1964: Pg. 85] Shakespearean critic Leslie Hotson argues that the speaker in 123 is unimpressed by Time, which she claims to be a prince of Shakespeare's time. Hotson states that this prince is referred to in Sonnet 124 where "This 'fortune's bastard', this victim of the 'time's hate', is ... King Henri III of France".[Hotson, p. 93] The atrocities that are described within Sonnet 124 parallel actions that King Henri III committed against his people as "The first great 'accident' (line 5) or misfortune that befell [Henri III] was Paris's famous Day of Barricades".[Hotson p. 93] Ultimately, Hotson argues that "the blow of tralled discontent" (Sonnet 124.7) was the speaker's reaction against a prince "as strong as his love, Shakespeare calls to witness the English fools of the inviting time, who die 'for their religion', having lived to murder their Queen".[Hotson p. 98] This interpretation becomes one of praise for the speaker's queen, which is clearly an "affirmation of the strength of his love voice ... of every true-born Englishman in the preservation of his Queen from all the treacherous attempts on her life".[Hotson, p. 98] Shakespeare allows this speaker to praise the Queen as reference to the numerous failed "conspiracy and other plots of assassination" that Queen Elizabeth successfully evaded; effectively making "love untouched by assassins' attempts".[Hotson, p. 280]
Analysis of key terms and themes
Quatrain one
If my dear love were but the child of state, It might for Fortune's bastard be unfather'd, As subject to Time's love or to Time's hate, Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gather'd.
Shakespeare critic Eugene Wright suggests in his book The Structure of Shakespeare's Sonnets that in the first four lines of Sonnet 124 the speaker puts forth a hypothetical; if the speakers' love were the product of circumstance, then it would have no strong foundations and would be "Fortune's bastard".Wright, Eugene Patrick. The Structure of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1993. Print. pg. 314 Being "unfather'd" the love would then be subject to "Time's love or to Times' hate".Wright 314 The next set of lines then alludes to the personification of Time found in Sonnet 123, in which Time has a scythe (Sonnet 123. 14). In Sonnet 124, the scythe used by Time subjects its victims to either "Times hate" by putting "weeds among weeds" or to "Time's love" by gathering "flowers with flowers". While this interpretation is valid, other critics have interpreted the phrase "child of state" differently. Beeching, in his introduction to The Sonnets of Shakespeare, also understands "state" to refer to circumstance and accident; another critic, Dowden, in his work The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, believes it to mean "born of place and power".Shakespeare, William, and H. C. Beeching. The Sonnets of Shakespeare; with an Introduction and Notes by H.C. Beeching. Boston, London: Ginn &, 1904. Print. pg 96Shakespeare, William, and Edward Dowden. The Sonnets of William Shakespeare. Folcroft, PA: Folcroft Library Editions, 1979. Print.pg 64 In his notes to Shakespeare's Sonnets, editor Gollanz believes it to refer to the earl of Southampton having been a ward of Lord Burghley and therefore a "child of state"."Introduction." Introduction. Shakespeare's Sonnets. Ed. I. Gollancz. Dent: Temple Shakespeare, n.d. N. pag. Print. pg 7
The rhyming words in this quatrain are "state" with "hate" and "unfather'd" with "gathered". "State", a political term, is coupled with "hate"—foreshadowing the speakers' negative descriptions of the political world in later lines. "Unfather'd"/ "gathered" suggests that love that does not have a firm and fixed foundation may by subject to whim and exploited/gathered by others. Eugene Patrick Wright maintains that the argument of this quatrain is that "Love based upon pleasure or on political, psychological, or sociological needs has no constancy, depending on the relative nature of its foundations."
Quatrain two
No, it was builded far from accident; It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls Under the blow of thralled discontent, Whereto th' inviting time our fashion calls: