Musings on Mortality: The Theme of Mortality in Spenser’s “Amoretti: Sonnet 75”, and Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 55” and “Sonnet 65”

1481 Words3 Pages

Death is the powerful force that defines the boundaries of life. Awareness of mortality is the influence behind many decisions that living beings make. In Spenser’s “Amoretti: Sonnet 75” and Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 55” and “Sonnet 65” the common theme is mortality. In the three sonnets, mortality is referred to with fear and anxiety. The principle of “Ars longa, vita brevis”, meaning, “art is long, life is short” (Eggleston), is captured by the sonnets in their goal to suppress mortality through poetry. Shakespeare’s sonnets focus on an adored young man and develop from the fear of his mortal demise as well as the “transience and destructive power of time” (Greenblatt 539-540). Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 55” intends to create a monument of writing that will benefit the boy’s memory until he attains eternal life. Insecurity and the fear of mortality are the basis for “Sonnet 65”, representing the unease that mortality creates. Spenser’s “Sonnet 75” uses mortality to emphasize the love between two people and the ability to immortalize said love through verse. “Amoretti: Sonnet 75” by Edmund Spenser, and “Sonnet 55” and “Sonnet 65” by William Shakespeare utilize the theme of mortality and develop the theme in divergent ways, encapsulating the ranging emotional factors surrounding mortality and its defeat.
Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 55” harnesses the inevitability of time in its development of the theme of mortality. The speaker does not object to or ignore the inevitable brutality of time. The poem demonstrates time’s certainty as it describes how supposedly timeless items are destroyed by time. Shakespeare uses images of marble, “gilded monuments”, statues, and masonry (Shakespeare, “Sonnet 55” 1, 5-6) as examples of presumably everlasting obje...

... middle of paper ...

...s memory until Judgement Day arrives. Regardless of the differences in their definition of mortality, “Sonnet 55” and Spencer’s “Sonnet 75” have parallel optimistic outlooks on immortality through verse. These outlooks contrast the insecurities in Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 75”, suggested by the repeated rhetorical questions. The theme of mortality’s development in “Sonnet 65” greatly differs from both “Sonnet 65” and “Sonnet 75” because of the speaker’s lack of confidence in his poetry’s ability to subvert mortality. “Sonnet 75” is unique from the other sonnets discussed because it develops using the mortality and immortality of a couple’s love, instead of one person’s memory, like in “Sonnet 55” and “Sonnet 65”. All of the sonnets compared show distinct similarities in the use of the theme of mortality, but they develop the theme through different emotional properties.

Open Document