Question about Shakespeare's Sonnet 17

Hi all. This is driving me crazy:

Ref Shakepeare's Sonnet 17:

It begins with a question, and the line has a question mark, but it seems to me that there is at least one more question, less a question mark:

Who will beleeue my verse in time to come
If it were fild with your most high deserts?

* no problem up to here - a question and mark.

Though yet heauen knowes it is but as a tombe
Which hides your life, and shewes not halfe your parts:
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say this Poet lies,
Such heauenly touches nere toucht earthly faces.

* no problem up to here, and no questions.

So should my papers (yellowed with their age)
Be scorn’d, like old men of lesse truth then tongue,

**question?

And your true rights be termd a Poets rage,
And stretched miter of an Antique song.

* another question?

But were some childe of yours aliue that time,
You should liue twise in it, and in my rime.


This sonnet reminds me of the Dedication page which reads in a
similar way.

Anyone any ideas?

Regards.

Hi Mike,

I think the part "so should my papers (yellowed with their age)...." is not a question. Shakespeare is basically saying "so if my papers become yellowed with age..." (should if become so) and people that speak less truth and should they call your beauty or heavenly features as something impossible and just the ravings and passions of a poet... he is trying to show that his words are not exaggerations, but that his comparisons/descriptions do not even do enough justice to the man's beauty.

And he ends with the idea that if the man (or the object of the sonnet) had a child, that he would live in the child (by resemblance or beauty) as well as in the poet's (Shakepeare's) rhyme.

I don't see these lines as questions, but as suppositions of how the poem might be interpreted or seen by a reader.

To paraphrase.

If my poem told all of what a wonderful chap you are, who would believe it in the future?

But this poem doesn't come close, not by half.
If it did they'd think I was lying, composing a fantasy.

And my works would be ridiculed, like old men who go on and on about the good old days.

And your true worth would be unrecognised, merely thought the result of poetic licence.

Unless of course you had a child ,then you would live on in that child, and in my poem (which would then be verified.)


I think it is the word "should" that is throwing you. In modern useage it reads like a question but in fact he is discribing what "would" happen if he could capture with words the man's beauty accurately.

None of them are questions, just stated facts. Just because who, what, where , when , why, and how, are in front of a sentence doesn't mean it's a question. It depends on how it's stated. Hope I helped a little. :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mike thomas

Hi all. This is driving me crazy:

Ref Shakepeare's Sonnet 17:

It begins with a question, and the line has a question mark, but it seems to me that there is at least one more question, less a question mark:

Who will beleeue my verse in time to come
If it were fild with your most high deserts?

* no problem up to here - a question and mark.

Though yet heauen knowes it is but as a tombe
Which hides your life, and shewes not halfe your parts:
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say this Poet lies,
Such heauenly touches nere toucht earthly faces.

* no problem up to here, and no questions.

So should my papers (yellowed with their age)
Be scorn’d, like old men of lesse truth then tongue,

**question?

And your true rights be termd a Poets rage,
And stretched miter of an Antique song.

* another question?

But were some childe of yours aliue that time,
You should liue twise in it, and in my rime.


This sonnet reminds me of the Dedication page which reads in a
similar way.

Anyone any ideas?

Regards.

---

They aren't questions; they're conditional. Basically, 'if this was so'. Shakespeare's basically hinting at the guy to have a kiddy.

No they aren't questions. I agree with the drift of those above who have explained it.

thanks everyone