Sonnet 32 - Content

Content

Sonnet 32 is highly dependent upon the relationship between the subject and speaker of the sonnet. The speaker of the sonnet reflects upon “his own mortality” in comparing himself to the young man whom he loves, whether romantically or in friendship it is unclear. The speaker refers to himself as the “deceased lover” which is significant as it highlights the age difference between the two men, a perpetual theme throughout Sonnet 32 as well as the rest of the handsome youth sonnets. After accepting, his eventual death, the speaker takes on a “self-deprecating” tone referring to his poetry as “poor rude lines” (4) and beseeching the youth to remember him after his death. This emphasis on his failure in poetry is imperative as it frames the rest of the sonnet and the speaker’s request for the young man to remember him “for his love” (14).

The nature of this love is in disagreement however. While some critics believe that the love the speaker refers to is in actuality a “romantic” love, others are convinced that the “love” (14) referred to is a “platonic love”. Regardless of the type of love that is illustrated within the sonnet, romantic or platonic, the love declaration should be considered significant as it characterizes the speaker’s tone and content. However, the audience should “take with a pinch of salt” the seemingly modest self-denunciation and claims of inadequacy put forth by the speaker; due to the fact that they are simply a means by which the speaker emphasizes his affection for the subject.

Subsequently, the content of Sonnet 32 is dependent upon the outlook of the speaker and the love he feels for the subject.

Read more about this topic:  Sonnet 32

Famous quotes containing the word content:

    A rake is a composition of all the lowest, most ignoble, degrading, and shameful vices; they all conspire to disgrace his character, and to ruin his fortune; while wine and the pox content which shall soonest and most effectually destroy his constitution.
    Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)

    Our frigate takes fire,
    The other asks if we demand quarter?
    If our colors are struck and the fighting done?
    Now I laugh content for I hear the voice of my little captain,
    We have not struck, he composedly cries, we have just begun our part of the fighting.
    Walt Whitman (1819–1892)

    Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves
    That they are not the first of fortune’s slaves,
    Nor shall not be the last, like silly beggars
    Who, sitting in the stocks, refuge their shame
    That many have and others must sit there,
    And in this thought they find a kind of ease.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)