Overview
This sonnet observes the poet’s personal transition on his interpretation of love. The speaker is no longer referring to “Fair Youth” when he utters the word ‘love’. Rather, the poet has come to realize his own shortsightedness in his obsession with youth’s materialism. The materialism of youth demonstrates the large issue at hand for this sonnet, the political and human state.
References to the political world of Shakespeare’s time are littered throughout this Sonnet. As literary scholar Murray Krieger states “Shakespeare is not likely to overlook the possibilities of metaphorical extension”. The idea of that state is held highly in this sonnet, “primarily it functions in the majestic world of sovereignty, the summit of political hierarchy”. The poet, however, realizes the fragility of the state as even the state is “subject to Time’s love or to Time’s hate” (124.3). The English state during Shakespeare’s life was ruled by Queen Elizabeth, who was regarded as high in virtue, intelligence and status. However, throughout Europe political assassinations ruled the continent and Elizabeth was not alone. She continually evaded numerous attempts at her life. The Sonnet extends out from the state as a political feature to “envelop the contingencies of the human condition, the generic ‘accident’ of line 5”. Shakespeare does this to show the linkages between the physical state of a nation as well as the ‘state’ of it populous. Once the speaker demonstrates this link, “’state’ and ‘accident’ are finally one, so that the instabilities of the political condition may be read back into the human state at large – or at least the human state without love”
Read more about this topic: Sonnet 124