Shakespeare's Sonnet 24

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Sonnet 24

By William Shakespeare

1   Mine eye hath play’d the painter, and hath stell’d  (A)

2   Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart;  (B)

3   My body is the frame wherein ‘tis held,  (A)

4   And perspective it is best painter’s art.  (B)

5   For through the painter must you see his skill,  (C)

6   To find where you true image picture’d lies,  (D)

7   Which in my bosom’s shop is hanging still,  (C)

8   That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes.  (D)

9    Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:  (E)

10  Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me  (F)

11  Are windows to my breast, where-through the sun  (E)

12  Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee;  (F)

13  Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art;  (G)

14  They draw but what they see, know not the heart.  (G)

Shakespeare's 24th Sonnet is one of my favorite poems by the Bard of Avon.  Sonnet 24 was first published in 1609 by Thomas Thorpe.  As was typical for Shakespeare, Sonnet 24 is written in iambic pentameter with three quatrains and one couplet.

I have explicated this poem to analyses what Shakespeare was saying.  I quite enjoy taking a poem apart and putting it back together again.  I think when it comes to poetry written at the level of Shakespeare that explicating the poem is the best way for someone to gain a real understanding of what the poem is truly about.

 

Punctuation: There are three sentences throughout this Sonnet- the first quatrain, the second quatrain, and the third quatrain and the couplet. Most of the lines in Sonnet 24 are end-stopped, however, there is enjambment in lines 1, 10, and 11.

Speaker: First Person Artist

Audience: The Artist’s Lover

Theme: Love

Motif: Eyes appear multiple times.

Moral: Beauty is more than skin deep.

Literary Devices:

-Alliteration- Lines 1, 4, and 5

-Rhyme: Sonnet 24 follows the typical rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean Sonnet.

-Metaphor- The whole poem is a metaphor for the poet being an artist who records their lover’s external and internal beauty on the canvas of their heart and mind.

-Line 3 is a metaphor for the body of the speaker being the frame that holds this image of their lover.

-Line 7 is a metaphor for the heart being an art gallery that the image of the poet’s lover hangs in.

-Personification- Line 10

-Repetition: Eyes