Week 4. English Lit. Shakespeare
I had a thought.
It may not be a great thought but here it goes.
Sonnet 65.
In the tutorials I was really stuck on line 10
"Shall time's best jewel from time's chest lie hid,"
What is 'time's best jewel'? or 'time's chest'? The footnotes suggest 'the beloved' is the jewel and that time's chest is a 'treasure chest'. I'm not sure I agree with those notes. So here's my idea, maybe 'time's jewel' is beauty itself and time's chest is literally time's chest, as in it's heart or breast (I mean if we're going to personify time lets really do it!). Am I making stuff up or is that not too far out? The thing that time values most is beauty, beauty is 'time's jewel'. So time wants to take as much beauty as it can into it's self, it's breast (or heart). Too far?
well I'm going further.
If we can accept this then the following verses can be read differently as well. That is line 11Shakespeare would hold time back from taking the beauty of the world for itself. The idea being that 'spoil' in line 12 no longer means 'destruction' but 'time's spoil of beauty' means that time steals or plunders beauty, taking it from the world. Line 13-14 would then go onto say that the only way we can keep beauty is in the form of records and love.
So to bring it together time love's beauty and takes it into it's own chest, time steals beauty and so takes it from the world. We are left without the beauty itself but we can remember it in love and poetry.
Make sense or just too far?
Not to harp on but I think it's got some interesting facets. Like, time is not an enemy but a fellow admirer of beauty, it takes all beauty to itself and so kills it for us but hides it in it's chest forever. So no true beauty ever dies it just goes beyond our reach.
Anyway, I'm not sure anyone will agree with that but I just felt that line 10 was important and difficult to grasp.
Thanks for reading.
This week's comment is on a couple of sonnets written by georgina (is that spelt right?): http://geebusd.livejournal.com/28868.html?view=17348#t17348