Sonnet 59
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Sonnet 59 in the 1609 Quarto
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Q1
Q2
Q3
C
If there be nothing new, but that which is
Hath been before, how are our brains beguil’d,
Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss
The second burthen of a former child!
O, that record could with a backward look,
Even of five hundred courses of the sun,
Show me your image in some antique book,
Since mind at first in character was done.
That I might see what the old world could say
To this composed wonder of your frame;
Whether we are mended, or whe’r better they,
Or whether revolution be the same.
O, sure I am, the wits of former days
To subjects worse have given admiring praise.
4
8
12
14
Sonnet 59 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's a part of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.
Sonnet 59 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The Shakespearean sonnet contains three quatrains followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the form's typical rhyme, abab cdcd efef gg and is written a type of poetic metre called iambic pentameter based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The first line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:
The ninth line exhibits the rightward movement of the third ictus (resulting in a four-position figure, × × / /, sometimes referred to as a minor ionic):
The meter demands several variant pronunciations: In line three "labouring" has two syllables; in line five "recórd" although signifying the noun we pronounce "récord"; in line six "even" has one syllable; in line seven "ántique"; in line 10 "composed" has three syllables; in line 11 "whether" has one like the following "where" (which may or may not be an alternate spelling of the same word), although "whether" in the next line has the usual two syllables; in line 14 "given" has one syllable.
In his book, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas Foster asserts that "pure originality is impossible". Human beings are fascinated by life in space and time, so when we write about "ourselves" and "what it means to be human", we are really just writing the story of life. Foster dedicates an entire chapter to Shakespeare's influence:
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