Shakespearean Sonnets, Essay Example

Extended Metaphor in Shakespeare’s Sonnets

The use of extended metaphor in Shakespeare’s sonnets often indicates a theme of enduring love. Many of the sonnets which are openly about love or art employ the device of extended metaphor in order to help to express a theme of wholeness. When employing extended metaphor, a poet is usually trying to sustain a comparison  between two seemingly unconnected themes. The comparison of the two things usually results is bringing out out traits of both which were previously unseen. For example, in Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18,” the sustained comparison is between a beautiful lady and a  single day of summer. The extended metaphor begins with the poem’s opening line “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (Shakespeare, 18, 1). That opening line sets up the comparison in a very obvious way. the rest of the poem continues along the same metaphorical lines.

One of the previously unseen similarities between the beautiful young woman and the  lovely summer day is the woman’s mortality. Because a day moves by so quickly, Shakespeare’s comparison accents the fleeting nature of youth and beauty. The line  “And summer’s lease hath all too short a date” (Shakespeare,18,  4) introduces the theme of death  and inverts this theme so that it applies to the day rather than the woman.  Later in the poem, he writes “But thy eternal summer shall not fade” (Shakespeare, 18, 9) which brings about another inversion because it is generally the seasons which are thought of as both fleeting and eternal. In this case, Shakespeare uses extended metaphor to express the eternal nature of the young woman in the poem. It is through this comparison that readers are encouraged to view the woman of the poem as something more than merely mortal. The woman might be Shakespeare’s art itself, and the poem an evidence of its “eternal summer.”

Similarly, the poem’s closing lines reinforce the idea that the poem’s theme is the enduring nature of art. The ending couplet: “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee” (Shakespeare, 18, 13-14).  In the last line, the word “this” is repeated for emphasis and refers to the poem itself. In other words, “Sonnet 18” is about the nature of artistic inspiration and the longevity of art. The poem relies on the use of extended metaphor to suggest that art is the truest way for any idea or feeling to transcend the limitations of time. However, understanding this theme is very difficult if the extended metaphor that is the heart of the poem is not properly interpreted.

Another of the sonnets that relies on the use of extended metaphor is “Sonnet 5” which is one of the famous “procreation” poems.  In the poem, an unnamed addressee is encouraged to see that while personal beauty and accomplishment fade, the continuation of a lineage or tradition can be a way to outlive time.  Again, as in “Sonnet 18,” the seasons are used an an extended metaphor for the passing of time. In fact, the concept of time is represented in the poem as an almost humanized force. The lines “For never-resting time leads summer on / To hideous winter, and confounds him there;” Shakespeare, 5, 5-6) create an image of time as a living being that rules over the seasons.

The thought that seasons wither into one another the same way that the stages of life pass into one another is connected in the poem to the passing on of heredity. The theme of procreation is expressed through the metaphor of perfume and distillation.  In lines 13-14, a form of victory over the ravages of time is offered: “But flowers distill’d though they with winter meet,/
Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.” (Shakespeare, 5, 13-14). By ending the poem on the words “still lives sweet,” Shakespeare is implying not only that the process of procreation is a form of immortality, but that anything distilled with care from one’s life can be made into “perfume” ands in doing so live beyond the mortal span of seasons.

As previously mentioned, the use of extended metaphor in Shakespeare’s sonnets is particularly powerful when used to convey ideas of wholeness, endurance, and immortality. this is because the effect of extended metaphor is to pull all of the separate ideas and images of a poem into a single comparison that effectively expresses the poem’s theme. “Sonnet 116,” for example, uses the extended metaphor of the North Star as an image of perfect human love. Simultaneously, Shakespeare is using love as a metaphor for the “guiding” aspect of the North Star in navigational terms.

Just as with all extended metaphors, the metaphor of the North Star as human love is meant to emphasize particular aspects of both of the compared things.  One way that the metaphor functions is to compare the inspiration of love to the “ever-fixed mark” (Shakespeare, 116, 5) of the star. This results in the expression of the theme that it should be love that serves as the primary point of guidance in life. It is an unfaltering and always-present light. In this poem, the most important connection that is made through the extended metaphor is that love is connected to the heavens. This means that it is an aspect of the Divine and that means that human love is an expression (and creation) of God, just as love represents the expression of Divine Nature. In this regard, the poem is an affirmation not only  of the Divine nature of the Universe, but of the power of love as a direct experience of Divine will. All of the events of life and human affairs are “best navigated” by following the instinct of love. The use of extended metaphor in “Sonnet 116” is, itself, expressive of the all-encompassing nature of love.