19 pages • 38 minutes read
William ShakespeareSonnet 73
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1609A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Old Age and Death
While it is impossible to know when exactly Shakespeare wrote “Sonnet 73,” most evidence points to the sonnets being in existence around 1598. Shakespeare would have been around 35 years old at this time. It is important to recognize that this is not old, even in Elizabethan England. While the average life expectancy at this time was around 42, this is mostly a result of a high infant mortality rate. If a person reached 35, it was likely they would live into their 60s. Shakespeare’s concern about aging and mortality could have been a result of mid-life questions about purpose, meaning, life, death, and the realization that we cannot stop time from moving forward.
The language Shakespeare uses to describe aging is dramatic and dark. He does not find much beauty in this process; instead, everything feels barren, dry, cold, and dark. The birds no longer sing. There are few, if any, leaves left on the trees that “shake against the cold” (Line 3). Night is not only dark, but it is “Death’s second self” (Line 8) that takes everything away.
While a fear of death is a natural human emotion, Shakespeare wrote extensively on death, so his presentation here of old age and its relationship to death fits. For example, in his most famous play, Hamlet, Shakespeare writes about how death is an undiscovered country where anything could happen, thus leading people to fear it more than anything. In The Tempest, Shakespeare laments about how old age makes the body grow uglier. In a famous scene from As You Like It, Shakespeare writes that in the last stage of a man’s life, he wallows in oblivion and loses everything.
Coupled with these examples, it is important to look at how Shakespeare contrasts old age with youth, which is a stage in life he constantly glorifies and beautifies in the sonnets.
Youth
Compared to old age’s hellish descriptions, youth is angelic. However, to truly understand Shakespeare’s depiction of youth, it is necessary to look outside “Sonnet 73,” which focuses on old age. Shakespeare writes about this topic with the understanding that the reader has already read his earlier sonnets about youth. This is because the sonnets were meant to be read together, almost like a narrative.
Most famously, “Sonnet 18” details the beauty of the Fair Youth in a complete contrast to the dying imagery of “Sonnet 73.” In “Sonnet 18,” Shakespeare uses the imagery of a summer day to describe the beauty of youth, but even the sunny day doesn’t compare, for the Fair Youth’s beauty outshines it. “Sonnet 19” is a plea to time not to age the Fair Youth, as Shakespeare begs time not to desecrate the Fair Youth’s skin with age marks and wrinkles. “Sonnet 22” makes the bold claim that once the speaker sees time in the Fair Youth’s face, he will know it is time to die. He says this because he finds his own liveliness in the Fair Youth’s beauty. In “Sonnet 60,” Shakespeare laments the passage of time and says time is like a scythe that mows all youth in its way. In “Sonnet 63,” Shakespeare says the only thing that will preserve the beauty of youth is the description of it in the sonnets.
There are many other sonnets dedicated to the beauty of youth, but the common theme is that youth is the exact opposite of old age. It represents beauty, life, and sexuality, but its greatest enemy is time, which is always attempting to turn it into the ugliness and despair of old age.
Love
This theme is more complicated than the other two and subject to much more debate. It is unclear whether Shakespeare is imploring the Fair Youth to love him or to love youth. The concluding couplet opens up these two possibilities, and because of its ambiguity, the poem could be about either thing.
Most likely, though, the poem is imploring the Fair Youth to love both the speaker and youth. This is consistent with the rest of Shakespeare’s sonnets that are all preoccupied with an obsession of youth, a disdain of aging, and a neurotic, paranoid insecurity about the Fair Youth’s loyalty and love for the speaker. Sonnets 71-74 make up a small group of poems where Shakespeare explores this feeling in depth. He seems adamant that his death is near, and he worries about the Fair Youth’s loyalty to him even after death. In these sonnets, Shakespeare implores the Fair Youth to forget him after his death, but the message of these sonnets actually implies that the love between them is stronger than death and memory; therefore, it will persist.
Within these sonnets, Shakespeare makes a point that the world will mock the Fair Youth for holding onto his love after the speaker’s death. On the surface, the speaker tells the Fair Youth to forget his love so he can avoid the pain of this mockery, but at a deeper level, the speaker implies that this love should survive even in the face of such criticism. Nevertheless, the speaker seems unconvinced of the Fair Youth’s love, so these poems act as a kind of preemptive strike against the rejection and betrayal that might eventually come.
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By William Shakespeare
