shakespearan sonnet 21 iambic pentameter

I’ve also written a detailed guide to Haiku (if you’re interested). I just completed a guide to Shakespearean, Petrarchan and Spenserian Sonnets. I have written other posts on Iambic Pentameter including guides to the scansion of Iambic Pentameter (with more examples from Shakespeare) and a look at Chaucer’s Iambic Pentameter. And let me know if this was helpful or if, especially, there’s a question you would like answered. Don’t forget to check out some of my poetry while you’re picking my brains – I do write some good stuff. A companion guide to this one is the Annotated To be or Not to be.23 2009 Milton, Blank Verse, and Paradise Lost. MaJohn Donne & his Sonnet Death be not proud….– New Post : Bright Star by John Keats, His Sonnet.At any rate, the point of Sonnet 21 is that the poet speaks truth and the rival poet hyperbolizes. But to say in the concluding couplet, 'Let them say more than like of hearsay well / I will not praise that purpose not to sell,' reveals that the poet is himself engaging in a kind of excessive, elaborate, and affected eulogy. Thus the phrase 'fair / As any mother's child' sufficiently praises the youth, or anyone for that matter. The poet criticizes the rival in a double sense, using the method of pretended understatement as a rhetorical device that contrasts the rival's superficial poetic style. Lack of sincerity, by extension, also is considered here an aspect of bad art.

The criticism of the rival poet - 'that Muse' - stems from the poet's view that too much hyperbole and artificiality indicate insincerity and false sentiment. Regretfully, the youth prefers inflated rhetoric and flattery to the poet's restraint, plainness, and sincerity.

Whereas in Sonnet 20 the youth's portrait was drawn from nature, in Sonnet 21 his appearance is concealed by cosmetics. In Sonnet 21, the poet notes for the first time the presence of a rival poet whether this is the same rival of later sonnets is unclear. Disclaiming kinship with the inconstant poetry of 'painted beauty,' he announces his only standard in the plea: 'O let me, true in love, but truly write.' Not only does he grant the youth immortality through his verse, but because the poet's enduring love is repeatedly stressed as well, the poet himself gains a kind of immortality. Having explored the nature of his and the young man's relationship in the previous sonnet, the poet now returns to his theme of immortality.

Full Glossary for Shakespeare's Sonnets.

Shakespearan sonnet 21 iambic pentameter