Sonnet 71

Quiz: Sonnet 71 by William Shakespeare

1. Recall – Form: What type of poem is Sonnet 71, and how many lines does it contain? What is the significance of the closing two lines as a structural unit?

1. Recall – Speaker & Addressee: Who is the speaker of Sonnet 71, and to whom is the poem addressed? What is the conventional name scholars give to this addressee within the broader sonnet sequence?

1. Recall – Key Image: What specific sound does Shakespeare use at the opening of the poem to mark the moment of death, and what was the cultural significance of this sound for an Elizabethan audience?

1. Recall – Symbol: What does the image of being "compounded with clay" represent in the poem? What does this symbol deliberately remove from the reader's experience of death?

1. Comprehension – Central Request: Summarise the speaker's main request to his beloved. Why does the speaker make this request — what is his stated motivation?

1. Comprehension – Paradox: The poem refers to itself as an object (described in the analysis as "this verse / this line"). What is the central paradox this creates, given the speaker's instructions to the beloved?

1. Comprehension – Tone Shift: How does the tone of Sonnet 71 change between the body of the poem and the final couplet? What does the final couplet reveal about the speaker's deeper concerns?

1. Analysis – Social Anxiety: The analysis identifies a recurring sense of social inferiority in the speaker. How does this anxiety shape the speaker's instructions to the beloved, and what does the sarcastic use of "wise world" suggest about the speaker's view of society?

1. Analysis – Selflessness vs. Bitterness: The analysis describes the poem as "quietly heartbreaking" and notes subtle bitterness alongside its apparent selflessness. Using evidence from the poem's tone and symbols, discuss how these two emotional registers coexist in Sonnet 71.

1. Analysis – Themes: Sonnet 71 engages with the themes of love, memory, and mortality simultaneously. Explain how the speaker's request to be forgotten connects all three of these themes into a single, unified emotional statement.

Answer Key

1. Sonnet 71 is a Shakespearean sonnet consisting of 14 lines. The final two lines form a rhyming couplet, which in this poem functions less as comforting resolution and more as an anxious caution, revealing the speaker's true concern.

1. The speaker is Shakespeare himself (or the poem's persona). The poem is addressed to a beloved young man, conventionally referred to by scholars as the "Fair Youth," whose real identity remains unknown.

1. Shakespeare uses the tolling of a church bell — the funeral bell — to mark the moment of death. For Elizabethan Londoners, this sound was a familiar, immediate signal of someone's passing, making death feel harsh and sudden rather than serene.

1. Being "compounded with clay" represents the body's physical decay and return to the earth. This symbol strips away any romantic or spiritual comfort associated with death, presenting it in raw, earthy terms.

1. The speaker asks his beloved not to mourn him after his death — and goes further, asking them to forget his name entirely and let their love fade. His stated motivation is deep love: he wants to spare the beloved from pain and potential social embarrassment.

1. The paradox is that the speaker crafts a poem — an object designed to endure beyond his lifetime — while using that very poem to ask the beloved to forget him. The poem simultaneously preserves and attempts to erase the speaker's memory.

1. The tone shifts from gentle and tenderly urgent to anxious in the final couplet. The couplet reveals that the speaker's true concern is not simply the beloved's grief, but the fear that public mourning will expose the beloved to ridicule from a judgmental society.

1. The speaker's sense of social inferiority leads him to frame his request as protection for the beloved — mourning him openly might shame the young man in the eyes of others. The sarcastic label "wise world" signals the speaker's contempt for shallow, mocking public opinion and the impersonal harshness of Elizabethan society.

1. The selflessness appears in the speaker's repeated concern for the beloved's wellbeing over his own remembrance. The bitterness emerges in the description of the world as "vile" and in the sarcastic "wise world," suggesting resentment toward a society he is glad to leave. Both coexist because the very act of self-erasure is driven by love yet tinged with the pain of feeling unworthy and socially inferior.

1. The request to be forgotten is an act of love (the speaker prioritises the beloved's happiness), a meditation on memory (he asks that his name and their bond be allowed to fade), and a confrontation with mortality (the instructions only become necessary because death is imminent and final). All three themes converge in the idea that true love, in the speaker's view, means releasing someone entirely — even from grief itself.