20 pages • 40 minutes read
Sonnet 60
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Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“Amoretti LXXV: One Day I Wrote her Name” by Edmund Spenser (1595)
Taken from Spenser’s sonnet sequence Amoretti, this sonnet predates Shakespeare’s thematic concerns about the immortalizing power of art. In Spenser’s Sonnet 75, the speaker asserts that their verse will “eternize” (Line 11) the virtues of the beloved. The water imagery used to depict time’s relentlessness is also similar to the wave imagery of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 60. Spenser’s innovation with the English sonnet is apparent here, as the poem follows an ABAB BCBC CDCD EE rhyme scheme, the repeated sounds linking with the preceding quatrain.
“Sonnet 19” by William Shakespeare (1609)
Beginning with the phrase “Devouring Time” (Line 1), this sonnet is thematically linked with Sonnet 60. Here, the speaker/lover addresses time (once again personified) and requests it to consume everything but the beloved’s “fair brow” (Line 9). In the end, the speaker decides it is only their verse that can best preserve the beloved’s beauty. Sonnets 12, 18, 55, 59, and 123 also explore the themes of poetry and immortality and the cruel power of time.
“Sonnet: On Being Cautioned Against Walking on an Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because It Was Frequented by a Lunatic” by Charlotte Smith (1797)
Smith’s Elegiac Sonnets, the collection from which this poem is taken, was written nearly two centuries after Shakespeare. Described as an early Romantic or Gothic sonnet, Smith’s poem shows the sonnet form’s easy adaptability to different themes and tones. Here, the imagery is distinctly Romantic, and the sensibility is proto-feminist. The speaker first fears the figure walking on the headland by the sea, but the ending couplet reveals they are actually envious of the “lunatic’s” freedom.
Further Literary Resources
“‘The conceit of this inconstant stay’: Shakespeare’s Philosophical Conquest of Time Through Personification” by Triche Roberson (2010)
In her thesis at the University of New Orleans, scholar Roberson analyses the theme of destructive time across Shakespeare’s sonnets, including Sonnet 60. Roberson argues that Shakespeare often personifies time in order to create a concrete enemy that can eventually be overcome.
Reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets by Don Paterson (2012)
Poet and Shakespeare expert Paterson offers fresh and insightful commentary on each of Shakespeare’s sonnets in this book published with Faber and Faber. Paterson conducts both a line-by-line analysis of the poems and pinpoints overarching themes and metaphors.
Shakespeare, Sexuality and the Sonnets by Aviva Dautch (2017)
Writing for British Literature, poet Dautch examines how Shakespeare's Sonnets have been interpreted through the perspective of biography, sexuality, and gender. While Dautch does try to shed light on the identity of the “Fair Youth” to whom most of the sonnets, including Sonnet 60, are addressed, she argues that the sonnets should be read for “emotional authenticity rather than literal truth.”
Listen to Poem
Veteran British theater and film actor Sir Patrick Stewart, star of the X-Men movie franchise, gives voice to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 60.
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Related Titles
By William Shakespeare
