Sonnet 107: Comments

Of all the sonnets this is the most difficult to give an adequate summary of, or to delve into its many meanings. It appears to be pregnant with hidden mysteries, and references abound to what appear to be contemporary events, situations and personalities. The majesty of the opening lines fills one with a sense of impending revelation, which indeed follows in the next two quatrains, but unfortunately, as soon as the spotlight of analysis is turned upon them, all the hidden meanings cloak themselves in mist, and the references to peace, mortal moons, the augurs and the balmy times evaporate into uncertain generalisations with no footing anywhere.

Nevertheless, since this has always been seen as an obvious dating sonnet, the effort must be made to place it somehow or other at a specific moment in history. I make out a case below for 1605, (notes to lines 5-8) , since this was the date of a lunar eclipse (and a solar one also, a fact which must have kept the soothsayers exceedingly busy) . Other recent commentators have opted for 1603 and 1604, and the early date of 1588 which was at one time proposed, based on the alleged reference to the crescent formation of the Spanish Armada, seems now generally to have been abandoned as unworkable. Coupled with the fact that Sonnets 99 and 104 refer respectively to 1599 and 1604, it seems appropriate that we have here also a date within the likely time span of composition.

The first quatrain, taken in the context of what follows, seems to suggest that the prognostications of doom that the poet's fears and the spirit of the world had prompted were entirely wrong. They have wrongly suggested that the poet's love is circumscribed by time and death, whereas he now knows it to be everlasting. This is confirmed in the second quatrain by the descriptions of failure and error of the augurs in giving misleading and false predictions, for the dooms and catastrophes that they foretold have turned out instead to be times of peace and tranquility, and a quickening of love. Death has been conquered, despite the prognostications of soothsayers, and the rapacity of Time, and the beloved youth, through the force of this verse, will outlive the monuments of all kings and princes, however opulent they may be. shakespeares-sonnets.com/

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