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The Importance Of Time In Shakespeare's Sonnets

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“Elizabethan mind was much influenced by the philosophy of Plato who assured it that there was a permanent and eternal Being which was the reality; on the other hand, the change, mutability, was only phenomenal, illusory and unreal. The daimonic Plato told the Elizabethan poets of the permanence, but they saw only mutability all around. Therefore, they questioned themselves: could mutable things be mad eternal? And they found the answer: only in art could beings be eternal…Shakespeare was also certainly and morbidly aware of the destructiveness of Time. In Sonnets 12, 15-19, 39, 60, 63-65, 100, 115-116, 123-124 and 126, and some other sonnets, he has expressed his utter concern over the corroding action of Time over the beauty of his friend, the Fair Youth.” (Sarkar, 78-79) Shakespeare’s Sonnets comprise a collection of 154 poems replete with themes like love, beauty, mortality, time and its destructiveness. Scholars have classified these Sonnets into three categories. Sonnet …show more content…

As we go through the sonnets it seems to us that the narrator is haughtily preoccupied with the passing of time and everything that it entails, including mortality, memory, inevitability, and change. He is distressed over such things that he has no control over time, but still he tries to conquer the time. At times it seems that the speaker is fighting a futile battle against time itself. Shakespeare often personifies time. It is said that time is the fourth character in his Sonnets. But the Time is the great villain in Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Shakespeare describes time as “bloody tyrant” (Sonnet 16), “devouring” and “swift-footed” (Sonnet 19). And time will eventually rob the beauty of the young man. This treatment of time is prevalent throughout the Sonnets, and it takes many forms, sometimes referring to the destructive power of time in general, sometimes focusing on the effects of time on a specific character in the

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