Shakespeare Sonnet 49 Tone

In Sonnet 49, a poem written by William Shakespeare, a lover is in fear of their significant other losing their mutual love. Shakespeare makes use of repetition and tone to show the fear of a partner’s weakening of love as time passes.

Repetition is used within the sonnet to put emphasis on the speaker’s fear of the disappearance of his partner’s love. The poem begins with the speaker claiming that he is working “against time” to prevent his lovers love from relinquishing. So “against that time” that his lover opens their eyes to see that they no longer love him, he wants to make an attempt to stop it. The statement “Against that time” occurs at the beginning of the first three stanzas to place emphasis on the speaker’s prediction that there will eventually be a time when his lover no longer carries love for him. Although the speaker tries to infer what is to come about when his lover loses his love, he harbors a doubt on whether “that time [will] ever come” because he is hopeful that it will not come about. He questions himself about why his lover may retract his love. The speaker is running against “time” trying to find ways to keep his

In the sonnet, it is apparent that the speaker is upset about his predictions that his lover may “cast his utmost sum” of love. He claims that one reason is that his “defects” will become more prominent with age which will cause his lover to “audit” or evaluate his reasons of loving him. The speaker cannot even “allege [a] cause” as to why his lover should have love for him. He believes that “when” his lover loses his love for him, if they are to come across each other somewhere the lover will “scarcely greet [him] with [an] eye.” In the end, the speaker is willing to put his own “hand against [him]self” and take the blame for any reason that causes him and his partner to separate