Time is the most salient of themes to be found in early modern literature. The reason why is one of the most prevalent topics of poetry throughout this period was undoubtedly love. The renaissance period is immortalised by some of the poetry on love and spirituality, this is what makes time so important. Time is seen as an opponent of true love, that true love has to be able to conquer time in order for it to be true love, in order for poetry and beauty to exist love must conquer time. Time can pessimistically be seen as linear and therefore destructive, in this instance time destroys all. So, love has to be able to stand up to time, otherwise poetry doesn’t exist. This is what makes time the most salient of themes, and what makes the poets job in this era of literature so important when you consider their natural enemy.
We see this view come across repeatedly in Shakespeare’s sonnets. In his sonnets Shakespeare offers three solutions to the destructive force of time , the solutions are; offspring; poetry and; true love. Shakespeare repeatedly talks of times sickle and scythe, both working tools for farming which could allude to a cosmic view of existence, this gives man a sense of urgency, fleeing from times destruction man doesn’t have the time to carefully enjoy youth and beauty, in the first seventeen sonnets Shakespeare persuades people into marriage, encourages reproduction so that that beauty can be passed down to future generations and continues fleeing the scythe.
We see this solution of offspring quite prominently in Sonnet 12, one of Shakespeare’s more famous Procreation Sonnets, in this sonnet we see Shakespeare conclude that the only way he can fight against time is by reproducing and allowing a version of himself to continue. Medical theory at the time suggested that orgasms shorten lifespan. To reproduce and ergo defeat time, you must simultaneously surrender from yourself some of your own life. This fact worried Shakespeare and his contempories, such as John Donne who wrote; ‘We kill ourselves, to propagate our kind.’ This line enforces the paradoxical nature of the persistent theme, from sonnets 1-17, of time. Shakespeare sees violets withering, ‘past their prime. Black hair, turning to white, as a result of growing old. Throughout Shakespeare’s poems we see him refer to time as a ‘times scythe/sickle’, ‘Time’s tyranny.’ Shakespeare views time as something ultimately destructive, something that takes away, that is fundamentally evil. When Shakespeare talks of offspring he’s grappling with the existential issue of his own death, time really is symbolic of death. It’s not connotated with the fact that it’s always moving, rather its connotated to what time will take away from us, which is our own existence. When Shakespeare dissects what conquering time looks like he’s really proclaiming meanings for life. True love, poetry, offspring, all reasons for living. This is why time is so salient, as death is an ever-present eventuality over all of us, so when Shakespeare talks about time, he’s talking about something that we’re far more aware of in the capacity of how it interacts with our own existence, which is death.
Sonnet 12 is one of the more prominent procreation sonnets as it shows the poet witnessing time pass, day and night, violets and hair losing colour, Shakespeare visualises and physicalises the passage of time, by attributing time to things we see occur over several months, time becomes not just a concept but a real world dynamic that is constantly affecting change over our surroundings. This perception of the world, from the eyes of a spectator, creates a sense of vulnerability and fear. That we, the reader, the poet and the elements of the poem are all temporary, and that time will one day seize us all. Time is crafted as something evil hanging over our head. What Shakespeare goes on to suggest in this poem is as a direct result of the consequence of time, which is what makes time the most important theme, as it is at the foundation of causality. The poet talks about [[[[trees with leaves in summer]]] which could act as shelter for the animals, and the once green grasses which has been gathered up into hay bundles that have harvested and stacked up. These grasses are intrinsically linked with funerals and dead bodies , so the grasses could be associated with human life. The images being portrayed hint at fertility, about bearing and suffering to raise children. The poet talks about trees and grass but focuses on the element where the tree’s act as something resembling a caregiver, providing care for the animals under their leaves. The poet focuses on the grass which has been bundled up for harvest, signalling the virtue of fertility. The poet is gradually alluding to the significance of fertility and of caring for the offspring as answers to what remains after time takes away the metaphoric leaves of the tree. What is left is the water, shade and shelter that that tree provided. This imagery is offered as an answer to time, time may take away the leave’s, but it will not take the animals that garnered shelter as a result of the trees existence. Time is still the most affluent of themes. This theme is continued when the poet goes on, in the next four lines, to discuss the ‘waste ‘of life when one does not bear offspring.
Another solution Shakespeare offers to escape times scythe is poetry. He believes that beauty is what enables poetry, as wherever there’s beauty, there is poetry. Poetry defies the power of time, as the nature, people and love declared in poetry are immortalised as they live forever within poetry. This is what makes poetry more significant in the war against time than beauty by itself, as the greatest flaw and greatest merit of beauty is that it is temporary. If time is an enemy, the poet becomes almost a rebel, dealing in poetic solutions to frustrate times destruction.
We see this notion of poetry being immortal in one of Shakespeare’s most famous sonnets, Sonnet 18. The first 17 sonnets primarily tackle the idea of offspring to contend with time, known as the procreation sonnets. The procreation sequence ends after the seventeenth sonnet, with the speaker observes that he doesn’t need children to preserve his beauty as beauty can also continue to exist ‘in [his] rhyme.’ Sonnet 18, therefore, is the beginning of a new solution to the grand problem of time. The most significant theme to appear in this sonnet is this rebellious defiance of the speaker in the face of time, as the poem, and therefore the beauty the poetry embodies, will live forever and defy time. The ‘eternal summer’ will not fade because it exists within this sonnet, in the final couplet the poet writes, ‘So long as men can breathe or eyes can see… So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.’
An important theme of the sonnet (as it is an important theme throughout much of the sequence) is the power of the speaker’s poem to defy time and last forever, carrying the beauty of the beloved down to future generations. The beloved’s “eternal summer” shall not fade precisely because it is embodied in the sonnet: “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,” the speaker writes in the couplet, “So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” James Boyd White criticises the sonnet, declaring ‘We know nothing of the beloved’s form or height or hair or eyes or bearing, nothing of her character or mind… This ‘love poem’ is not written in praise of the beloved, but in praise of itself.’ An important point to note is that White refers to the beloved as ‘her’, despite it being widely accepted that the beloved Shakespeare is addressing is a him. I would contend that the poem isn’t about the transient and temporary features of love, like the significant other in the relationship, who they are, they’re character and features, those will all fade and disappear. What Shakespeare is championing is the concept of love in itself. This poem immortalises the idea that love conquers time, it isn’t so much about the nature of the love of itself but rather the fact that love exists in this form and what that means in relation to times scythe. In a second way, Shakespeare has conquered time. Firstly, through offspring, secondly through poetry and finally, through true love.
The final solution offered to time in Shakespeare’s sonnets is true love. In his sonnets he includes friendship and love between humanity and speaks to a religious epiphany of mind in order for people to get to a higher spiritual plane (heaven) where time doesn’t exist.