Remembrance (William Shakespeare)

Remembrance is a Shakespearean Sonnet concerned with a fair young man whom he loved deeply. It is written in dejection and weariness occasioned by the poet’s absence from his young friend. As the poet is on a tour far from his friend, he is in a mood of dejection and sadness.

The present sonnet tells us about the poet’s past griefs and losses. It is not a great poem. It does not strike a deep chord in the heart. The thought is not profound. Presumably, it has won its place in the people’s esteem through the beauty of its opening lines :

“When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,

I summon up remembrance of things past”

“Sweet” was Shakespeare’s favourite epithel. It meant “fresh”, “unspoiled” and “unseasoned” instead of the modern derogatory senses of “sugared” or “sugary”. The decorative texture of the sonnet is indicated by the use of alliteration in the opening lines. The bold use of the metaphor of the court of law is remarkable. Just as witnesses are called in a court of law to give evidence, so the poet calls memory to bear witness. The evidence tendered by the memory is sad. The poet laments the loss of many things he looked for and he regrets the waste of his precious time. He feels that his time has been wasted in a sense in seeking the things which he now lacks, his eyes, which had previously remained dry, are now drenched with tears as he thinks of the death of his beloved friend. He weeps for the forgotten sorrows of love and laments what many an object now lost has cost him. The memory of his past sorrow pains him all the more. He has to take account of his past grief with great caution. The poet uses, in this context, the metaphor of monetary transactions. He represents himself as being in heavy debt arising from his previous griefs and pains with the responsibility of discharging the debt. In other words, the experiences of his undergoing sorrow or pain are repeated as if he has not experienced them earlier.

A Shakespearean sonnet contains three quatrains followed by a couplet. A strong pause in sense and rhythm and at the close of each quatrain is for Shakespeare the primary law of sonnet-harmony. In the couplet, the poet affirms the thoughts of his dear friend’s love, puts an end to his sorrows and replenishes all his losses. He finds consolation in remembrance of his young friend’s love and this enables him to rise above the mood of depression. Thoughts of his ‘dear friend’ thus soothe the melancholy recollections to which he is subject.

Normally, the couplet in a Shakespearean sonnet gives the moral or conclusion towards which the previous twelve lines have been pointing into itself the true essence of the poem. But here is an exception. Here, the couplet introduces a surprise or negation, for thoughts of the poet’s dear friend remove his sadness and restore his losses. This conclusion suddenly swings the reader into a point of view antithetical to that developed in the quatrains. There is, thus, a sort of dramatic shift in the poet’s thinking.

Shakespeare is not at his best in this sonnet. He plays with words primarily for decorative effects. The alliteration of “And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste” is decorative. However, the second line of the sonnet has a world-wide circulation in the literature of the twentieth century, with its concern with time.

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