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What is the central theme of Sonnet 104?
Answer: The central theme of the sonnet is the enduring nature of true love and the idea that the beauty of the beloved will never fade with age.
Who is the speaker addressing in the poem, and what is the nature of their relationship?
Answer: The speaker is addressing a fair friend, and the poem suggests a deep and affectionate friendship or love.
How does the speaker describe the effects of time on the beloved in the sonnet?
Answer: The speaker describes the effects of time as the process of aging and the physical changes that occur as a person grows older. The beloved's outward appearance may change, but their inner beauty remains constant.
What poetic devices does the poet use in Sonnet 104 to convey his message?
Answer: The poem makes use of metaphors, personification, and paradox. The metaphors describe the beloved's beauty as a treasure that time cannot diminish. Personification is used to depict time as a "bloody tyrant." Paradox is employed to emphasize the contrast between the physical effects of time and the timeless nature of the beloved's beauty.
How does the sonnet structure contribute to the overall meaning of the poem?
Answer: The sonnet structure, consisting of 14 lines with a specific rhyme scheme (ABABCDCDEFEFGG), allows the speaker to develop and conclude his thoughts on the enduring nature of love and beauty. The final rhymed couplet often serves to emphasize the central message of the poem.
What is the significance of the title "To me, fair friend, you never can be old"?
Answer: The title introduces the main idea of the poem, emphasizing the eternal youth and beauty of the beloved as perceived by the speaker.
How does the poem reflect the idea of love and beauty as transcendent and eternal?
Answer: The poem asserts that true love and beauty are eternal and unaffected by the passage of time. The beloved's beauty is portrayed as a treasure that is not subject to decay.
What is the emotional tone of the poem, and how does it contribute to the message?
Answer: The emotional tone of the poem is one of admiration, affection, and confidence. The speaker expresses unwavering belief in the timeless nature of the beloved's beauty, and this tone reinforces the idea of enduring love.
How might the cultural and historical context of Shakespeare's time have influenced the themes and sentiments expressed in this sonnet?
Answer: The Renaissance era, during which Shakespeare wrote, celebrated the ideals of beauty, love, and humanism. The concept of immortalizing the beloved's beauty in poetry and art was a prevalent theme during this period.
What is the ultimate message or lesson conveyed by Sonnet 104?
Answer: The sonnet conveys the message that true love and beauty are timeless and eternal. It suggests that the beloved's beauty, as perceived by the speaker, will never grow old or diminish, no matter what the passage of time may do to the physical appearance.
What is the tone of the poem? Support your answer (2)
The tone is intimate towards the poet's friend as the poem describes his "beauty" and "sweet hue" and reflects deeply to the friend on how aging affects his beauty which implies close personal connection.
Comment on the effect of the figure of speech in line 9. (3)
Simile. The poet compares his friend's beauty to a dial-hand. This image is effective as it implies that his friend's beauty ages as slowly with the passing of time as a dial-hand revolves around a clock so that the change in his beauty is scarcely noticeable.
Comment on the effectiveness of the personification in the poem. (3)
The poet uses personification effectively by contrasting the seasons to help us to imagine what each season was like and moreover how each season always triumphs over the one before it as "Junes burn'd" the perfumes of April. This personification thus serves to echo the key message of the poem that aging will triumph over youth.
What is the function of the volta in the poem? (3)
The volta in the poem serves to shift perspective and context with the realization of how time has detracted from his friend's beauty.
How does the poet portray aging? (2)
The poet portrays aging as something that is barely noticeable "like a dial-hand" but notes that even if we think that our "eye may be deceiv'd" aging will always triumph over youth.
How does the poet use repetition/anaphora to convey meaning?(2)
The poet repeats the word "three" to emphasize the passing of time with each season since he met his friends
Comment on the effectiveness of the imagery in the poem.(3)
The author stimulates the reader's imagination with the sense of sight by focusing on his friend's appearance and changing thereof. The author also stimulates our imagination by describing the scent of "perfumes" in April and elicits feelings of sadness for the reader by reflecting on how aging has affected his friend as it "steal from his figure"
Title importance
A direct address to his friend(male)
first quatrain
"To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still.
Three winters cold Have from the forests shook three summers' pride;"
The repetition of "three" implies the 3 years that the poet has known this friend. The "fair" is an implication that the poet admires his friend's physical appearance. Seasonal imagery is used to indicate the passing of time: winter's cold and summer's pride. The bareness (the lack of ability to form plant of fruit)of winter and the fullness of summer have been evoked. The poet uses "eyed" instead of "saw" to emphasise that he admires physical appearance. "pride" - summer's beauty "shook" - a process of reducing his beauty to winter's barrenness. summers pride has been shaken... Surely, this encapsulates how beautiful people feel when they see that they are ageing?
second quatrain
"Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot unes burn'd, Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green."
Autumn is alluded to using "yellow" - the colour of Autumn the diction of "perfumes" for April and "burn'd" for June, describing how the robust heat of summer has overwhelmed the scents of spring by burning them up - this is to echo how summer's pride was shaken "fresh" and "green". Both words are aptly used as descriptions of the youth of the friend but also match the images of nature so far developed in the first two quatrains. - Both words allude to new and inexperience.
third quatrain
"Ah, yet doth(do) beauty, like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceive'd;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv'd:"
The volta is indicated by 'Ah'. A moment of reflection he realizes that beauty changes with time - even if the pace of the change (and of time) is so gradual that it is barely perceived. Here the simile used is"a dial-hand".
"Beauty" can signify that of the fair friend as well as the definition of Beauty for the time. The change and realization is subtle(nearly unnoticeable) -
The "sweet hue" "still doth stand" but it has "motion" that "deceives" his eye. "Sweet hue" echoes well the perfumes and pride of spring and summer from the first two quatrains.
Rhyming Couplet "For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred, - Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead."
The couplet always contains the main point of the sonnet.
The poet now addresses a new audience: "thou age unbred". Future readers are told by the speaker that before we were born, the best of beauty was already dead. In other words, his fair friend has died, and we cannot see his beauty. "summer" here is dead - it was shook in the first quatrain and now has died. Yet in "hear this" lies hope of a sort: we read the sonnet (and are still reading it 400 years later) and so, in a sense, his beauty has endured.
Tone
The speaker's tone when speaking of his friend is sincere - loving even. While running parallel to the sincerity and admiration is also the sombre reflection of realising that his friend MUST have changed in the three years that he has known him. Because the sonnet becomes less and less personal, the shifting tone may also indicate the growing awareness in the speaker of his self-deception.
2.1 Discuss the theme of the destructive influence of time in this sonnet. (3)
Shakespeare suggests that time is able to destroy beauty. There is an indication of the passing of time as being able to erode beauty and youth. However, there is also the suggestion that the recipient of the poem seems not to have aged significantly.
2.2 Explain how the poet uses the seasons to show the passing of time. (3)
The seasons show the passing of time, the aging and dying process that accompanies winter following on the birth of new life ('spring') and growth ('summer').
2.3 Explain the change that comes about in lines 9 - 12 ('Ah, yet doth ... may be deceived'). (2)
The poet acknowledges the aging process, as opposed to the octet in which he imagines that the friend has not aged noticeably. There is an inevitability of fading beauty that comes with the passing of time.
2.4 Show how the rhyming couplet serves to sum up the poet's attitude to age and changing beauty. (2)
This sums up the argument, providing a possible explanation. The poet suggests that the beauty of the friend is so great that it can never be surpassed, even in ages to follow. Also, a reference to the inevitability that change (and age/the loss of beauty) must come to all. For 1 mark only. It is also the convention requirement of a Shakespearian sonnet.
