Student Name
Dr. Anita Obermeier
ENG 200
28 February 2001
A Canker in a Fragrant Rose: The Tension between Beauty and Virtue in Shakespeares Sonnet 95
Sonnet 95 of Shakespeares blond young man sonnets depicts a tension-filled variation on the classic blazon. The poet seems torn between the shame (1) that taints his subject and the sweets (4) of the subjects beauty. The initial imagery of a canker (2) within a rose (2) serves to set up the sexual overtones that dominate the poem, as well as to create the sense of strain between disapproval and attraction that heightens throughout each quatrain. Shakespeare develops this imagery to ensnare the subject in an increasingly agitated opposition between his physical beauty and his behavioral repulsiveness. Though the poet claims that he cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise (7), the closing couplet goes counter this, bringing the sense of antagonism between the poets admiration and his disapproval full circle. The couplet serves as a warning that the physical beauty and virility that have dominated the young mans life will end, destroying the mansion (9) where he hid his moral failing through the quatrains.
The opening quatrain of Sonnet 95 serves to expose the contrast between the young mans physical and moral states. This quatrain, despite permitting the young mans beauty (3) to dominate the sense of his sins (4), also begins to assert the idea that he will suffer for his vice. The opening image of How sweet and lovely (1) dominates the completion of the thought dost thou make the shame (1) through both rhythm and diction. While Shakespeare sets the opening in perfect iambic rhythm, the insertion of a pyrrhic foot to begin the statement of the young mans shame (1) weakens the idea, allowing the sense of the young mans physical loveliness to dominate.
However, the imagery surrounding the young mans beauty also implies its corrupting influence. The use of the word canker (2), while singularly appropriate to the plant image of a rose (2), also implies both a corrupting influence and the possibility of sores resulting from venereal disease. Though canker sores are generally associated with the mouth, connecting a canker to a rose plays upon the sexuality generally associated with flower imagery. In keeping with the understatement of the vice in the first quatrain, Shakespeare limits the idea of consequences to this one, nearly imperceptible, image. The closing of the first quatrain again emphasizes the sweets of the young mans physical perfection, adding weight to the thought with an initial trochee. However, Shakespeare here begins to emphasize the consequences of the young mans behavior, with the idea that he does his sins enclose (4), offering the idea he has bound his vices to himself, trapping himself within them.
The second quatrain develops the poets tension from facing the dilemma of being that tongue that tells the story (5) of the subject of the poem. This quatrain presents the idea of the young mans beauty as a faade. Though Shakespeare feels inspired to make lascivious (6) comment on the young mans sport (6), implying the lecherous nature of the young man and his (probably many) sexual encounters. However, in spite of opening this particular quatrain with implications of the lewd nature of the young man, Shakespeare himself, trying to relate the young mans tale, is influenced by the young mans beauty. The repetition in lines 7-8, dispraise in a kind of praise, and naming thy name gives a sense of hesitance to the quatrain, presumably bred of Shakespeares inability to commit himself to relating this tale objectively. However, in closing with the idea that the young mans name blesses an ill report (8), Shakespeare commits himself to the idea that, though the subjects physical countenance may beautify the presentation, the nature of the report is still ill (8) and therefore inherently not healthy and not normal.
Having created such a clear tension in the first and second quatrains, Shakespeare begins to exploit and resolve it in the third. This quatrain manipulates the previous arguments through the closeness of antipodal images, the personification of vice, and intense rhythmical variation. The opening two lines of this quatrain, both beginning with trochee, call attention to the idea of those vices (9) that afflict the young men having consciously chosen the mansion (9) of his beauty. This personification of vice as an independent force attaching itself to this young man implies a sort of helplessness on the part of the young man as an unwitting servant of his lascivious nature. The second, spondaic foot in line 10 places an unexpected emphasis on their habitation, adding force to the idea of the vices as a dominant force upon the young man.
The imagery that closes this quatrain emphasizes the shallowness of beautys veil (11). The diametric opposition between beauty and blot (11), which are so close to one another in the poem, offers a sense of the thinness of the ability of beautys ability to cover the stains on the young mans history and character. This thought is furthered in the final line of the quatrain, in which all things turn to fair that eyes can see (12). Though this thought initially seems positive, focusing upon the fair (12) nature of that which is seen about the young man, the limiting that eyes can see (12) implies the incomplete, vain nature of the young mans fairness, implying that that which is not beheld with the eyes will not turn to fair (12). The perfect iambic pentameter of these two lines (11-12) serves to give them the force of truth, making them easily acceptable while presenting highly complex and contradictory images.
The closing couplet works as the culmination of both the initial sexual imagery and as the judgment of the young mans overriding physical qualities. The warning to take heed (13) serves to force the idea that there is a danger in the previously stated opposition. However, the phallic imagery of the large privilege (11) of which the young man should be aware helps to complete the poems consideration of physical beauty in place of virtue by drawing the poem back to the sexual overtones set up in the beginning. The warning that the hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge (12) forces the idea that age leads to physical impotence, thereby leaving physical beauty the transient domain of the young, and virtue the permanent domain of all.
Work Cited
The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Eds. M. H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt.
7th ed. 2 vols. New York: Norton, 2000. 1:1041-42.
Works Consulted
"canker, n." Oxford English Dictionary. Ed. J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner. 2nd ed.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.