Question

what do you you understand by the poet in the poem sonnet 55

Answer 1

Sonnet 55 is all about the endurance of love, preserved within the words of the sonnet itself. It will outlive material things such as grand palaces, royal buildings and fine, sculptured stone; it will outlive war and time itself, even to judgement day.

This is because the poem will always be a 'living record', the memory of love will stay alive within the sonnet, come what may. The effects of time, the destructive forces of war - they count for nothing.

This idea, of love, memory and spirit being kept alive in the written word, is ancient and goes back at least to Ovid in his Metamorphoses.

Shakespeare was undoubtedly inspired by this but his sonnets are still shrouded in mystery. We know he wrote them at a time when England was going through social and religious chaos in the late 16th century but scholars have no clear idea who he wrote them for.

Was he directly inspired by the fair youth and the dark lady? Or were they created for royalty and those aristocrats who sponsored plays? Are the sonnets simply the work of a dramatic poet in love with love itself and who had read Ovid, Horace and Homer and other classics?

They are certainly love sonnets but exactly which type of love is open to question - the Greeks had eight different words for each aspect of love, amongst them Eros (sexual passion) and Agape (love for everyone).

Sonnet 55 is a curious mix of both. It could well be inspired by a personal friend of the poet's. Equally, it could point to a deity - say Venus - or the spirit of that goddess within a real male or female.