Sonnet Number 94

This sonnet was very difficult to understand, but from what I
got out of it, I believe it can relate to everyone. Before the shift the speaker was showing the
difference between strength and resistance or temptation. I think that he meant
that in order to show strength, you much go through weakness. For example, in
the first line it says these people have the power to hurt but will not. The weakness/temptation
is to hurt, but the fact that they will not shows strength. When people resist
temptation, the speaker says that they will receive heaven’s graces. Then after
the shift, the speaker talks about how this relates to a flower. If the flower
meets with an infection/temptation, the speaker says that “sweetest things turn
sour by their deeds”. I think this means
that anything sweet and innocent can be tempted and easily changed to something
far worse. The last line clarifies this saying that when flowers fester they
smell worse than weeds.

Sonnet Number 87

The speaker is saying all these nice things about the boy,
but they are reasons for him not deserving the boy. I think the he speaker is
desperate in wanting the boy and therefore is saying he is not worthy and feels
bad for himself. I think the main reason he doesn’t feel deserving of the boy
is because the boy is from a family that has a great deal of money. In this
sonnet there are many things that single to that like all the financial words
the speaker uses. I also think that the speaker is looking for attention. Many
people who say that they aren’t good enough are looking for the person they are
speaking to, to contradict what they had said about themselves to feel better.
I think that the speaker is hoping that by saying he is not worthy; the boy’s
feelings for him will come out.

Sonnet Number 99

This sonnet it more like a love sonnet even though the
speaker is saying that the boy isn’t beautiful anymore. Throughout the sonnet
the speaker blames the flowers for stealing the beauty of the boy for themselves.
By saying the flowers stole the boys’ beauty;
the speaker says that the boy is the most beautiful creature and also the creator
of the flower’s beauty. Without the boy, the flowers would not be beautiful. They
took the smell, softness, and color form the boy. Form this sonnet, it made me
believe the boy is sick. The color of the boy was said to be stolen by the
flowers. Usually when people lose their color, it means that they are sick and
have a pasty complexion. They would also not smell that great because the fact
that they are sick and unable to do much because they are weak. The speaker
also mentioned that the roses were standing which could represent how the boy may
be so weak that he cannot stand.

Sonnet Number 116

The speaker is very passionate in how they feel but at the
same time, is trying to control it so they can get their point across. This
sonnet was inspiring to me. The speakers finds love to be a mystery but when
you read through the sonnet you can tell that they know what love is when he
compares what love is not to what love really is. He believes love to endure to
the end of time. I liked that although the speaker knows what love is, having
been in love, that he is still puzzled by love. I believe that love can do that
to anyone. You may know what love is and how it makes you feel, but at the same
time, it can make you so confused that you don’t know what to do. In the
couplet the speakers says that if he is wrong about love in what he has said in
the sonnet, then no man has ever loved.

Sonnet Number 130

I thought this sonnet was very interesting in that it was a
mockery of the conventions of love poetry. It is not a traditional love poem,
talking about everything they like about the mistress. Instead, it describes
his mistress as an unpleasant sight to look at. I think the couplet is a very
important part to this sonnet because all the quatrains say that her breath
reeks and is not a woman you want to look at. Then the couplet comes in to show
that the speaker is sincerely in love with the mistress. He says his love is
rare, and I believe this shows that his love for her goes deeper than her
looks. Also in the last line it says that she is misrepresented with false
compare. This further explains that the speaker believes his mistress was
compared only to another woman’s looks rather than who she was as a person,
showing his love for her is for who she is and not what she looks like.

Sonnet Number Fifty-five

This sonnet to me was very hard to understand. What I got
out of it was that the speaker was making the boy immortal by writing poems
about him. The speaker thinks that poems will live on forever and therefore
when this poem lives forever, so will the boy. He writes about how man-made
objects such as statues which honor princes. These objects crumble to dust over
time, but poems will last forever. The speaker says that even after death the
boy will continue on and live in the poem, making him immortal. The speaker also
says that the boy will dwell in lovers’ eyes. I wasn’t exactly sure what to
think of this as the end of the sonnet. I think that the speaker sees the boy
having a love that people of the future will see as perfect and want a love
like the boy. I think the speaker is telling the boy that people will admire
him and look to him the same way people look at statues of great war heroes and
aspire to be like him.

Sonnet Number Eighteen

When I first read this sonnet I thought it was really sweet
and was something that I would like to be written about me. Then as I was going
though line by line to understand what every line meant, I realized that the
speaker was talking to the boy. I know the speaker could be anyone but Shakespeare
wrote these to the boy and I thought it was a little weird. He compares the boy
to a summer’s day but says that the boy is lovelier than summer. The speaker says that everything good comes to
an end, talking about summer, but the boy’s eternal summer never ends. I think
he is saying that the boy is always good but he did say everything good comes to
an end. I think the speaker is trying to convince the boy to procreate because if
he does, then the boy’s eternal summer will live on, even if it’s not with the
boy, but it will be with his children.

Sonnet Number Twelve

This sonnet is a lot about how time and the seasons are
related to each other. Shakespeare uses spring to represent growth and birth,
summer to represent youth, fall to represent the elderly, and winter to represent
death. He also uses day as life and night as death. The speaker sees things
that are young grow old and lose their beauty just like all other sweet and
beautiful creatures like the boy lose their beauty. Beauty overtime is lost but other is grown at
the same time. The speaker has doubts about the boy’s beauty and is telling the
young boy that he is beautiful but he won’t stay like that forever. The speaker
is trying to convince the boy that if he decides to procreate and have
children, that his beauty will live on. The only way to defy what time does
(takes away beauty), is to have children and keep the beauty alive.

Sonnet Number Two

This sonnet ties in greatly with sonnet number one. The speaker
asks the boy what’s going to happen forty years from now when you’re all wrinkled
and showing signs of aging; where is your beauty; where has it gone? The speaker
tells the boy that when he has no child to show where his beauty has gone, that
it went to waste by not letting his beauty live on. I think that if I was in
the position of the boy and was the recipient of this poem that I would think
deeply about what I had thought before and what the speaker was trying to tell
me. My outtake on this subject would be greatly changed because I would want
something beautiful to show off of what was once mine. I think that once the
boy realizes that he will not forever be beautiful that he will change his mind
about having kids.

Sonnet Number One

This is the first sonnet that is written to the young boy.
It is thought that Shakespeare is paid to write these sonnets to the boy,
convincing him to have children. He starts off saying that people want more of what’s
beautiful. As an old man dies, the man has children who carry out his memory.
The speaker tells the boy that the boy is interested in his own beauty and doesn’t
care to share it with anyone else. The speaker tells the boy that he is wasting
his beauty because of the fact that he doesn’t share it. The boy is told to
make a child so that the memory of his loveliness is not forgotten. I think
that the parents of the boy have told the boy many times that they want him to
have kids, but he doesn’t listen to them because no kids listen to what their
parents suggest. I think that the parents use Shakespeare as a way to get to the
boy as another source of convincing him to have children.