10/29/04

Statues and Time

Sometimes, one may wonder if people in the future will remember your legacy, or even who you were. Family might keep your memory going, but the general thinking is that eventually people will forget that you ever existed. In his fifty-fifth sonnet, Shakespeare expresses his views on how and why people will remember a certain person, most likely a love interest of his. He concludes that statues and other forms of remembrance will eventually erode or be destroyed, but that his poetry will memorialize this person for all eternity.

Shakespeare's first quatrain states that he thinks that his sonnet will last longer than the marble that makes up statues or tombs for royalty. He also states that his poetry will make his love interest ." . . shine more bright in these contents/ Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time" (Shakespeare 3-4). In line three, Shakespeare...