directory
home contact
SONNET 33 PARAPHRASE
Full many a glorious morning have I seen Many times I have seen a glorious morning
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye, Light up the mountain tops,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green, Bathe the green meadows in golden rays of sunshine,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy; Color the streams with its heavenly magic;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride And then [the morning] allows the darkest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face, In a mass across the sun's face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide, And from this sorrowful world the sun hides,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace: Fleeing to the west unseen while the sky remains overcast;
Even so my sun one early morn did shine Like this, my own sun one morning did shine
With all triumphant splendor on my brow; With glorious splendour on my face;
But out! alack! he was but one hour mine; But, alas, my sun was mine for only an hour;
The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now. The concealing clouds have masked him from me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth; Yet love thinks no less of him for this;
Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth. If the sun in heaven can be overcast, so can the suns in the world below.

Notes

Flatter...sovereign eye. (2): The sun here is compared to a king or queen - a monarch's eye is said to "flatter whatever it rests upon" (Dover Wilson, 134).

ugly rack (6): i.e., the thick mass of clouds blocking the sun's rays.

this disgrace (8): again referring to the cloud mass.



Between the time Shakespeare wrote Sonnet 32 and 33, the poet's entire attitude toward his relationship with his young friend had changed. While he had been focused on his own mortality throughout Sonnets 27-32, now the poet has a new and more pressing dilemma to jar him from his previous obsession. In Sonnets 33-35 the poet makes it clear that he has been deeply hurt by his young friend, who many believe to be the historical Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare's patron.

We cannot say what specific wrong-doing prompted such displeasure, although we can assume that the young man had many interests other than the poet, and he may have surrounded himself with other friends (and possibly other lovers), leaving the poet feeling isolated and unwanted. The poet's dislike of his friend's actions are clear from the overall reading, but also from his choice of words: "ugly", "disgrace", "basest", "disdaineth", and "staineth." Moreover, the sun permits the clouds to cover his face as he cowers off to the west, and the direct comparison is made between the sun and the poet's friend in the third stanza. Even though he denies it in the concluding couplet, the poet seems to resent the friend for causing a rift in their relationship.

As mentioned, the sonnet does end on a positive note with the poet ready to forgive his friend, content to accept that disappointment in this life is wholly natural. "Two Renaissance commonplaces, the sun-king comparison and the sun-son word play, are put to such good use in the friend's behalf that 'out alack', the emphatic but conventional phrase denoting the speaker's regret, seems no more than a polite formula. The excuse offered in the couplet may be unconvincing in the view of the next two Sonnets, but it is so plausible within the limits of this one that the quatrains seem to exist mainly to provide grounds for it" (Landry, 58). J.D. Wilson argues that you can trace the story of the young man's transgressions by reading the sonnets in this order: 48, 57, 58, 61; 40, 41, 41; 33, 34, 35; 92, 93, 94.


How to cite this article:
Shakespeare, William. Sonnet 33. Ed. Amanda Mabillard. Shakespeare Online. 8 Dec. 2008. < http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/33detail.html >.

References
Landry, Hilton. Interpretations in Shakespeare's Sonnets. Berkeley: U of CP, 1964.
Lee, Sidney, Sir. A Life of Shakespeare. New York: Macmillan, 1916.
Masson, David. Shakespeare Personally. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1914.
Shakespeare, William. The Works of Shakespeare. Ed. John Dover Wilson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1969.
Wordsworth, William. Poetical works, with a memoir. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1854.

______

Even More...

 Shakespeare in Old English?
 Shakespeare's Influence on Other Writers
 An Elizabethan Christmas
 Clothing in Elizabethan England

 Queen Elizabeth: Shakespeare's Patron
 King James I of England: Shakespeare's Patron
 The Earl of Southampton: Shakespeare's Patron
 Going to a Play in Elizabethan London

 Ben Jonson and the Decline of the Drama
 Publishing in Elizabethan England
 Shakespeare's Audience
 Religion in Shakespeare's England

 Alchemy and Astrology in Shakespeare's Day
 Entertainment in Elizabethan England
 London's First Public Playhouse
 Shakespeare Hits the Big Time


More to Explore

 Introduction to Shakespeare's Sonnets
 Shakespearean Sonnet Style
 How to Analyze a Shakespearean Sonnet
 The Rules of Shakespearean Sonnets

 Shakespeare's Sonnets: Q & A
 Are Shakespeare's Sonnets Autobiographical?
 Petrarch's Influence on Shakespeare
 Themes in Shakespeare's Sonnets





 Shakespeare's Greatest Love Poem
 Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton
 The Order of the Sonnets
 The Date of the Sonnets

_____


According to Wordsworth ... The famous poet William Wordsworth wrote that "the appropriate business of Poetry, (which, nevertheless, if genuine, is as permanent as pure science), her privilege and duty, is to treat of things not as they are, but as they appear; not as they exist in themselves, but as they seem to exist to the senses, and to the passions." According to Wordsworth, Sonnet 33, for its "merits of thought and language" is one of Shakespeare's greatest poems.

_____


 Who was Mr. W. H.?
 Are all the Sonnets addressed to two Persons?
 Who was The Rival Poet?

 Shakespeare on Jealousy
 Shakespeare on Lawyers
 Shakespeare on Lust
 Shakespeare on Marriage

 Portraits of Shakespeare
 Shakespeare's Contemporaries
 Shakespeare's Sexuality

 Worst Diseases in Shakespeare's London
 Shakespeare on the Seasons
 Shakespeare on Sleep

_____


Thoughts on sonnet order ... For the comprehension of the story of the Sonnets, it is best, I believe, to regard them as consisting of eight papers of Sonnets, really connected, but written at intervals over a series of years (from 1596 or 1597 to about 1603 is the most feasible range), these papers not indicated by breaks at the proper points when they were printed, but, with that omission, arranged there exactly in their right order, save that the last twenty-six (Sonnets 127-152) ought to be intercalated bodily between Sonnets 32 and 33. -- David Masson