Shakespeare’s Sonnets: on the Survival of Humanity Owing to Beauty Jamie Leung College

Shakespeare’s sonnets justify the rigorous fixation of beauty standards that dictate the human race by cultural, social and political means. This essay analyzes the first four sonnets of Shakespeare’s collection, which both bluntly satirize human aesthetics, yet contradict their criticism by enforcing the important purposes of beauty. Moreover, the beauty discussed in these sonnets could be interpreted as both human physical productions, such as children, as well as less tangible accomplishments like art—later discussed in this essay. To begin, the tone of the sonnets is bitter from the choice of diction. One could interpret that beauty is beyond the narrator’s grasp from the third-person voice and how he or she is didactic in how beauty should be utilized, as though it is a public resource. Instead of describing how he or she uses his or her own beauty, the narrator speaks in hypotheticals of how to spend such capital. Diction that support this claim include “unthrifty” (Sonnet Four, line 1) and “excuse” (Sonnet Two, line 11)—in terms of “excusing” one’s lack of beauty with the beauty of one’s children—relating how abstaining from parenthood is an injustice to the world and a sign of self-absorbency. Although this interesting...