Sonnet 74 is one of 154 sonnets published by the English playwright and poet

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

in 1609. It is one of the Fair Youth sequence.

Synopsis

This sonnet takes back the urging that occurs in Sonnet 71, that the young man should forget the author. Instead, this sonnet encourages the youth to keep the better part of the poet, which is in his verse, and which will outlive the poet. There is a sense in this poem that the young man is like one who will potentially inherit something of value, and is at the bedside of a dying rich relation, and is considering in a legalistic manner what that value will be – once the dead body has been carried away and dumped in the earth as food for worms. The young man will inherit the best part of the poet – his spirit in the form of this sonnet.Shakespeare, William. Ingram, William. Redpath, Theodore. ''Shakespeare’s Sonnets''. Barnes & Noble. 1965.

Structure

Sonnet 74 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet, which contains three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the

rhyme scheme A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes at the end of each line of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme; lines designated with the same letter all rhyme with each other. An example of the ABAB r ...

ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, and is composed in

iambic pentameter Iambic pentameter () is a type of metric line used in traditional English poetry and verse drama. The term describes the rhythm, or meter, established by the words in that line; rhythm is measured in small groups of syllables called " feet". "Iam ...

, a poetic

metre The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its prefi ...

in which each line has five feet, and each foot is a pair of weak/strong syllables. The tenth line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter line:

  ×   /  ×    /     ×  / ×  / ×    / 
The prey of worms, my body being dead; (74.10)

:/ = ''ictus'', a metrically strong syllabic position. × = ''nonictus''. The meter demands a few variant pronunciations: line 4's "memorial" counts as 3 syllables, line 8's "spirit" counts as 1 (possibly pronounced as ''spear't'', ''sprite'', ''sprit'', or ''spurt''), and line 12's "rememberèd" is expanded to 4.

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sonnet 074 British poems Sonnets by William Shakespeare