Shakespeare and the wastes of time

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Shakespeare and the wastes of time

著者（英） Yoshifumi Yamaguchi journal or

publication title

Doshisha literature

number 26

page range 20‑36

year 1972‑03‑22

権利（英） English Literary Society of Doshisha University

URL http://doi.org/10.14988/pa.2017.0000016481

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SHAKESPEARE AND THE WASTES OF TIME

YOSHIFUMI Y AMAGUCHI

I

The Elizabethan age is not only a period in vvhich the medieval sentiment of self-abnegation was supplanted by the assertion of the dignity of man, but also a period in which man's status in the world received special attention. The fact that the Elizabethans were obsessed with time seems to prove how tenaciously they were wrestling with the problem of the nature of man, for the consideration of time is inseparable from the consideration of man himself. It is, indeed, the consciousness of time that distinguishes man from God and the beasts. This consciousness is an indispensable prerequisite of being human, since God is beyond time, the beasts are merely placed in time, and man alone is aware of time and its power.

The problem of time is a favorite theme with the Elizabethans.

There are many masterpieces which show us how forcibly it appealed to the minds and hearts of great writers in the Renaissance, but no one would hesitate to say that Shakespeare's sonnets are the typical example in which one can witness the Elizabethan obsession with time. In Part I of her interesting study The Continuity of Poetic Language, Josephine Miles has statistically scrutinized which words were preferred by the poets of the 1540's and 1640's. In it she clas- sifies the vocabulary of poetry into the majority and minority voca- bularies.¹ The word time is among the majority vocabulary of the 1. The majority vocabulary is made up by words used at least ten times per one thousand lines by ten or more poets, and the minority vocabulary by words used at least ten times per one thousand lines by four or more but less than ten poets. See]. Miles, The Continuity of Poetic Language (New York: Octagon Books, 1965), pp. 19 and 31.

C 20 )

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1540's and 1640's. Although in Venus and Adonis Shakespeare uses time only eight times in 1194 lines, in The Rape of Lucrece he uses it forty times in 1855 lines, and in the sonnets seventy-eight times in 2155 lines. The frequency of the word in these three works can be estimated as seven, tv'lenty-two, and thirty-six per one thousand lines respectively. Shakespeare's reference to time in the sonnets is far more frequent than that of the other poets examined by Miles. It may be said without exaggeration that nowhere else is Shakespeare more obsessed with time than in the sonnets, where "time is treated with a polyphonic grandeur unmatched in English literature."2 His sonnets are largely concerned with the falling of things into ruin and with the various ways of making war upon the" bloody tyrant Time."

They are a descant on the destructive action of time.

n

As is well known, no word is ever used twice in precisely the same sense. This especii:tlly true of words that have been frequently used and have undergone a great variety of transformations in meaning. Many of the commonest words in a language tend to develop various meanings. No one can deny the existence of a certain cor- relation between polysemy and word-frequency. The word time is a case in point. It is not only one of those words used most frequently in the poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but also a polysemant. I think it necessary as well as worth while to clarify some of its manifold meanings before analyzing the sonnets on time. Since it is difficult to cite typical examples by which to illustrate the senses of time from the sonnets alone, I do not avoid borrowing from other works of Shakespeare.³

2. Herschel Baker, The Race of Time (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Toronto Press, cl967), p. 53.

3. In examining the polysemy of time, I have profitably consulted: (1) T.

Kimura, Toki no Kanten kara j11ita Shakespeare Geki no Kozo (The Structure of Shakespeare's Play as Seen from the Viewpoint of 'Time ') (Tokyo:

Nan'undo, 1969), pp. 121-25; (2) A. Schmidt, Shakespeare.Lexicon (Berlin:

WaIter de Gruyter, c1962), II, 1229-1231; (3) ]. Foster, A Shakespeare Word-Book (New York: Russell & Russe!l, 1969), pp. 652-3; (4) the QED.

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Of course, time is often used in the sense of "continuous dura- tion," as in "the riper should by time decease" (Sonnet 1).4 It can also mean "a limited stretch or space of continued existence," as in Caliban's "after a little time/I'll beat him too" (Ill, ii, 96). When it is preceded by such adjectives as ancient, old(en), or golden, as in Macbeth's "Blood hath been shed ere now, i' the olden time" (IH, iv, 75), it means" a particular age or era." It must be noticed that

" golden time" is often used figuratively, as in "thou ... shalt see ... this thy golden time" (Sonnet 3).

About the middle of the fourteenth century, time began to be used, followed by the infinitive to come (or the participle coming), in the sense of "the future," as in "Who will believe my verse in time to come?" (Sonnet 17). We must here keep in mind that it is not the word time that has the sense" the future," but the whole phrase time to come.

In the Elizabethan age, time acquired a new meaning: "the pre- sent" or "the present moment." Among the quotations given in the OED to illustrate this meaning, the earliest one is from Shake- speare's Love's Labour's Lost: "Rated them ... / As bombast and as lining to the time" (V, ii, 787-9). Chronologically earlier but closely connected with this meaning is .the use of time in the sense of "the general state of affairs."5 It appears that there is no fundamental difference between these two senses. If there is any difference at all, it is that of emphasis. In the former the chronological aspect is emphasized, in the latter the qualitative. In Hamlet's "The time is out of joint; 0 cursed spite,/That ever I was born to set it right!"

(I, v, 188-9), for instance, the emphasis is on the state of affairs, while in "this was sometimes a paradox, but now the time gives it proof" (IH, i, 115-6), the emphasis is on the present.

It sometimes happens that time is used as a synonym for world 4. The text for quotations from the sonnets is Shakespeare's Sonnets, ed. 'IV.

G. Ingram and T. Redpath (London; University of London Press, 1967), and from the plays and poems other than the sonnets is Shakespeare: Complete

~Works, ed. W. J. Craig (London: Oxford University Press, 1969).

5. The OED gives 1484 as the first date for the sense" the general state of affairs."

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or men.⁶ In the sonnets we find some examples of time used in this sense:

If all were minded so, the times should cease,

And threescore year would make the world away. (Sonnet 11) So thou be good, slander doth but approve

Thy worth the greater, being woo'd of time. (Sonnet 70)

I have ... given to time your own dear·purchas'd right. (Sonnet 117) In Macbeth's "I had liv'd a blessed time" (H, iii, 99) or "Let every man be master of his time" (Ill, i, 41), time is used in the sense of

"life." Similarly, when Jaques, after comparing the world to a stage, says "one man in his time plays many parts" (H, vii, 142), he is using the word precisely in this sense.

In the examples I have cited above, time is considered in relation to its (limited) duration and extent. We must now turn our attention to meanings in which the word is treated without reference to its duration. Although time is derived from Old English tima, a normal development of Old Teutonic timon formed on a root ti- (to stretch, extend)+abstract suffix -mon, yet it was used quite early in the sense of "occasion," "proper time," or "opportunity." These three senses are analogous in that they all refer to a "point" of time. In" Another time mine eye is my heart's guest" (Sonnet 47), time is used in the sense of "occasion." The opening lines of Son- net 3 are

Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest Now is the time that face should form another,

where the word is to be interpreted as "proper time." When Anti- pholus of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors says" there's a time for all things" Cll, ii, 67), he reminds us of the use of time in Ecclesiastes.

iii. 1: "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every pur- pose under the heaven." J\/[acbeth's" There would have been a time for such a word" CV, v, 18) is also a reminiscence of Ecclesiastes.

6. Here it must be remembered that world is derived from Old English weo·

rold which is made up of two elements, wer- (man)+ald (age). For a full discussion of world and its implications, see C. S. Lewis, Studies in ~Vords

(2nd ed.; London: Cambridge University Press, 1967), pp. 214-68.

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In these instances time stands for "proper occasion" or "proper season." An example of ti'me in the sense of "opportunity" is to be found in Venus and Adonis: "Make use of time, let not advantage slip" (1. 129).

So far we have endeavored to explicate the polysemy of time by citing typical examples mainly from the sonnets; but time is such a vague word-strictly speaking, it is not the word that is vague, but its" referent "-that it is no wonder that there are cases where we cannot so easily draw a clear-cut demarcation line which separates one meaning from another. For instance, consider the opening lines of Sonnet 76:

Why is my verse so barren of new pride, So far from variation or quick change?

Why with the time do I not glance aside

To new-found methods and to compounds strange?

It is not certain whether "with the time" in line 3 means "with the passing of time" or "after the new fashion,"7 though in this context it is more likely to mean the latter. Also in "given to time your own dear-purchas'd right" (Sonnet 117), the meaning of time is ambiguous; it can mean both "the world" and "the passing hour."

A more typical example of ambiguity is Sonnet 70 which we have already cited as an example of the use of time in the sense of "the world": "So thou be good, slander doth but approve/Thy worth the greater, being woo'd of time." On the phrase "being woo'd of time" Edward Hubler comments as follows:

If the subject of the phrase is taken to be "Thy worth," the meaning is that the friend's worth will be cherished through the course of time; if either "thou" or "slander" is taken to be the subject, the phrase means "the favorite of the age."8

To be sure, the ambiguity of the phrase "being woo'd of time"

originates in the grammatical ambiguity of the passage quoted; but if the word time were not so vague, if it were not so polysemantic, then such ambiguity would not arise.

7. Edward Hubler, ed., Shakespeare's Songs and Poems (New York: McGraw- Hill, 1964), p, 84.

8. Ibid., p, 76.

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25 Our investigation of the.polysemy of time is fairly limited. How- ever, it might be safe to say that under the senses examined above are subsumed certain significant aspects of time-time as duration, time as status, time as juncture. Needless to say, we should not assert that a lexical classification of the senses is sufficient to show the deeper implication of time. The interrelation of its manifold meanings cannot be understood unless it is set against the whole structure of a work in which time plays a significant role. It is only when we view time from a wider perspective, never through a lexical classification, that we can unravel the mysteries of time and grasp its true significance. Our next business, therefore, is to enter the world \vithin the sonnets. In the paragraphs that follow, we shall discuss especially Sonnets 12, 15, 19, 60, 63, and 100 so that we may gain a full understanding of time as it is treated in the sonnets.

HI

As Northrop Frye puts it, "time IS the enemy of all things in the sonnets, the universal devourer that reduces everything to non- existence."g This aspect of time is introduced for the first time in Sonnet 12:

'When I do count the clock that tells the time, And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;

'When I behold the violet past prime, And sable curls o'er-silver'd all with white;

When lofty trees I see barren of leaves, 'Which erst from heat did canopy the herd, And summer's green all girded up in sheaves Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard:

Then of thy beauty do I question make That thou among the wastes of time must go, Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake, And die as fast as they see others grow;

And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence Save breed to brave him when he takes thee hence.

This is one of the most beautiful sonnets in the whole sequence.

9. Northrop Frye, "How True a Twain," The Riddle of Shakespeare's Son- nets (New York: Basic Books, c1962), p. 43.

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The structure of the sonnet conduces a great deal to the logical progression of thoughts. The figure of anaphora (" When I do count ... /When I behold ... /When lofty trees ... ") is used to emphasize the poet's uneasy feeling for the friend's beauty. Moreover, the transiency of beauty is here associated with the passing of the "brave day" into "hideous night," the fading violet, gray hair,IO naked trees, and reaped "summer's green." Indeed in the sonnets, fading flowers, fallen or yellow leaves, evening, night, autumn, and winter are frequently used in relation to the theme of the transiency of beauty:

"For never-resting time leads summer on/To hideous winter ... /Sap check'd with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,/Beauty o'ersnow'd and bareness everywhere" (Sonnet 5), "Then let not winter's ragged hand deface/In thee tby summer ere thou be distill'd" (Sonnt 6),

"Against the stormy gusts of winter's day" (Sonnet 13), "Where wasteful time debateth with decay/To change your day of youth to sullied night" (Sonnet 15), " ... when his youthful morn/Hath travail'd on to age's steepy night" (Sonnet 63), and " ... thou mayst in me behold/VVhen yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang/Upon those boughs which shake against the cold .. ./In me thou see'st the twi- light of such day/As after sunset fadeth in the west,/Which by and by black night doth take away" (Sonnet 73). You will notice that the world of spring, summer, morning, and light is sharply contrasted with the world of winter, evening, night, and darkness. The world where the beauty of the sun is eclipsed by the "basest" clouds is, as it vvere, the "wheel of time that carries all created things, includ- ing the blossoms of spring, away into itself."ll Seeing the world of spring passing into that of hideous winter, the poet cannot but con- template the beauty of his friend: "Then of thy beauty do I question make."

As beautiful as Sonnet 12 is Sonnet 15 wherein the poet for the 10. The images of "violet past prime" and" curls o'er-silver'd" are indebted to Ovid's The Art of Love: "Violets always fade. . .. Look, my handsome young man, gray hairs will come in your life-time." (Ovid, The Art of

Love, trans. R. Humphries (Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press, c1957), p. 133.)

11. Northrop Frye, "How True a Twain," The Riddle of Shakespeare's Son- nets, p. 43.

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first time refers to his intention of immortalizing his friend through his verse. It would be a gross error, however, to say that the theme of the sonnet is poetic immortality. Rather should we say that the theme is the poet's realization of mutability, the transiency of things within time. The theme of transiency is explicitly developed in the quatrains:

vVhen I consider every thing that grows Holds in perfection but a little moment,

That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;

When I perceive that men as plants increase, Cheered and check'd even by the selfsame sky, Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease, And wear their brave state out of memory:

Then the conceit of this inconstant stay Sets you most rich in youth before my sight, Where wasteful time debateth with decay To change your day of youth to sullied night;

And all in war with Time for love of you, As he takes from you I engraft you new.

This sonnet reminds us of the following lines from Ovid:

Nothing is constant in the whole world. Everything is in a state of flux, and comes into being as a transient appearance. Time itself flows on with constant motion, just like a river: for no more than a river can the fleeting hour stand still. As wave is driven on by wave, and, itself pursued, pursues the one before, so the moments of time at once flee and follow, and are ever new. What was before is left behind, that which was not comes to be, and every minute gives place to another.¹²

The substance of what the poet is saying in Sonnet 15 is that everything has but a little moment of perfection, and that men, however proudly they may boast of their showy splendor, begin to decline at the zenith of their prosperity. The poet's realization of "this inconstant stay" carries far greater weight than his desire to "engraft"

12. Mary M. Innes, trans., The Metamorphoses of Ovid (Harmondsworth:

Penguin Books, 1970), p. 339. The first quatrain of Sonnet 60 is also re- miniscent of this passage from Ovid.

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his friend. It is the fear of the encroachment of destructive time that presses on the poet's consciousness.

Indeed, "wasteful" in line 11 is not an otiose epithet; it does present as great a threat as the phrase "wastes of time" in line 10 of Sonnet 12. We all know that time has already been introduced in the first quatrain of Sonnet 1:

From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty's rose might never die, But as the riper should by time decease His tender heir might bear his memory,

where time has nothing destructive, nothing tyrannical. In Sonnet 15, on the contrary, time emerges as an enemy who plots to change

"day of youth" into "sullied night," an enemy upon whom the poet must make war in behalf of his friend.

True is it that Shakespeare, in dealing with the theme of transiency, often uses the images of natural scenery, but far more frequent and far more striking is the figure of Father Time personified as an aged man, bald, but having a forelock, and holding a scythe or a sickle and sometimes an hourglass. In several sonnets, Shakespeare refers to these traditional attributes of Father Time. To quote from Sonnets 100 and 116:

Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life;

So thou prevent'st his scythe and crooked knife . . . . though rosy lips and cheeks

'Within his bending sickle's compass come.

Although Shakespeare uses the cliche figure of Father Time, he does not use it (at least in his best sonnets) as an isolated image, an image which has no relationship with other clusters of images. In Sonnet 12 the figure of Father Time first appears:

And summer's green all girded up in sheaves Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard;

And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence Save breed to brave him when he takes thee hence.

Here the figure of Father Time is so closely associated vvith th,

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29 reaping image of lines 7-8 that it gives us no sense of abruptness.

The same can be said of Sonnet 60:

Nativity, once in the main of light,

Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd, Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,

And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth, And delves the parallels in beauty's brow, Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth;

And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.

And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand, Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

Time's "scythe" in line 12 is not an isolated figure; it reverberates the image of "Crooked eclipses" at the beginning of line 7. Most commentators gloss the word crooked as "malignant," which is doubt- less appropriate to eclipses; and "Crooked eclipses," so interpreted, seems to pertain to the astrological imagery established in line 5.

But it is obvious that the word, besides its figurative sense of "malignant," retains its literal sense of "curved,"13 and this sense fore- shadows Time's "scythe" in line 12. Thus it will be clear that in these sonnets the figure of Father Time does not stand aloof from other images, nor is it used as an ornamental image.

According to Erwin Panofsky, the scythe or sickle to which Shakespeare refers several times in the sonnets is undiscoverable in ancient art. What can be found in it is two different types of representations of time, that is, time as "Kairos" and time as " Aion."

These ancient images have nothing of the destructive that can be found in the figure of Father Time. He writes:

In none of these ancient representations do we find the hour.glass, the scythe or sickle, the crutches, or any signs of a particularly ad- vanced age. In other words, the ancient images of Time are· either characterized by symbols of fleeting speed and precarious balance, or by symbols of universal power and infinite fertility, but not by symbols of decay and destruction. How, then, did these most specific attributes of Father Time come to be introduced?

13. See M. M. Mahood, Shakespeare's lVordplay (London: Methuen, 1965), pp. 95-6.

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In the next paragraph Panofsky answers up to the question:

The answer lies in the fact that the Greek expression for time, Chronos, was very similar to the name of Kronos (the Roman Saturn), oldest and most formidable of the gods. A patron of agriculture, he generally carried a sickle,u

Two significant points have now become plain enough: (1) the ancient representations of time are not marked by symbols of demoli- tion; (2) the coalescence of Chronos with Kronos is responsible for the destructive aspect of Father Time. Panofsky, after pointing out these important facts, goes on to explain Kronos-Saturn in connection with Time:

His sickle, traditionally explained either as an agricultural implement or as the instrument of castration, came to be interpreted as a symbol of tempora quae sicut falx in se recurrunt; and the mythical tale that he had devoured his own children was said to signify that Time, who had already been termed' sharp-toothed' by Simonides and edax rerum by Ovid, devours whatever he has created,15

From this it becomes evident that the insatiable voracity of Time was derived from the cannibalistic image of Saturn.

This malignant voracity of Time finds expression in The Rape of Lucrece:

Mis-shapen Time, copesmate of ugly Night, Swift subtle post, carrier of grisly care, Eat~r of youth, false slave to false delight,

Base watch of woes, sin's pack-horse, virtue's snare;

Thou nursest all, and murderest all that are;

O! hear me, then, injurious, shifting Time,

Be guilty of my death, since of my crime. (11. 925-31)

Here Time is represented as an "eater of youth"; Shakespeare's Time as an eater, of course, reminds us of Ovid's

Time, the devourer, and the jealous years that pass, destroy all things and, nibbling them away, consume them gradually in a lingering death. 16

14. Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), p. 73.

15. Ibid., p. 74.

16. M. M. Innes, trans., The },detamorphoses of Ovid, p. 341.

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In like manner, Spenser wrote:

All such vaine moniments of earthlie masse, Devour'd of Time, in time to nought doo passe.

(The Ruines of Time,

n.

^419-20)17

31

In the opening speech of Love's Labour's Lost, Time is represented as a "cormorant" devourer with the sharp-edged scythe:

King. Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives, Live register'd upon our brazen tombs,

And then grace us in the disgrace of death;

When, spite of cormorant devouring Time, The endeavour of this present breath may buy That honour which shall bate his scythe's keen edge, And make us heirs of all eternity. (1, i, 1-7)

Similarly, in Troilus and Cressida, Ulysses is thinking of Time as a

" great-siz'd monster" who devours" good deeds past":

Ulyss. Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,

A great-siz'd monster of ingratitudes:

Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour'd As fast as they are made, forgot as soon

As done. . . . (Ill, iii, 145-50)

To these examples must be added Sonnet 19 which is most important to the consideration of the insatiable voracity of Time. Here Time is addressed in apostrophe:

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws, And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;

Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws, And burn the long-liv'd phoenix in her blood;

Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets, And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time, To the wide world and all her fading sweets:

But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:- Oh carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow, Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;

Him in thy course untained do allow For Beauty's pattern to succeeding men.

17. The text for quotations from Spenser is Spenser: Poetical Works, ed. ]. C.

Smith and E. de Selincourt (London: Oxford University Press, 1966).

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Yet do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong My love shall in my verse ever live young.

In many of the sonnets that contain the figure of apostrophe, the addressee is usually a person; but in this poem it is to Time that the poet addresses himself. It must be noticed that ten imperatives (or eleven, if we take" I fordid thee" in line 8 as notionally equi- valent to the imperative) are used here, all addressed to Time. Fur- thermore, three instances of the vocative are to be found-" Devour- ing Time" in line 1, "swift-footed Time" in line 6, and "old Time"

tn line 13. This frequent use of the imperative and vocative seems to show the intensity of the poet's concern for the hostility of devouring Time. His attitude shifts from "do wate'er thou wilt" to

"Oh carve not" and then, with a sudden twist to the preceding thought, to "Yet do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong/My love shall in my verse ever live young." No doubt here the poet is more convinced of the eternalizing power of his verse than in Son- nets 16 and 17. Yet it is not by the poet's belief in his verse that we are impressed, but by his sense of Time's tyranny.

In this sonnet Time is represented as "Devouring Time" and

"swift-footed Time." These representations point to some significant characteristics of time. The eating metaphor of "Devouring Time"

carries special weight of menace. It is more often than not associated with other eating metaphors-the earth devouring "her own sweet brood," the loathsome canker eating up the sweet bud. What we feel again and again in the sonnets is that nothing is released from the effects of devouring Time. He makes everything slip into decay;

he is like a canker in the rose. There can be no error in saying that the Shakespeare of the sonnets is obsessed especially with this aspect of time.

Another aspect which must not be ignored is what Meyerhoff calls "subjective relativity" in the measurement of time. "Time as experienced," he writes, "exhibits the quality of subjective relativity, or is characterized by some sort of unequal distribution, irregularity, and nonuniformity in the personal metric of time."18 This aspect of 18. Hans Meyerhoff, Time in Literature (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University

of California Press, 1968), p. 13.

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time IS most conspicuously illustrated when Rosalind says:

Time travels in divers paces with divers persons. I'll tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, who Time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal. (As You Like It, HI, ii, 328-32) The variability of time's speed originates in the psychological state of those experiencing it. There is an absolute cleavage between time experienced by men in joy and by men in grief:

Gaunt. Thy grief is but thy absence for a time.

Baling. Joy absent, grief is present for that time.

Galmt. What is six winters? they are quickly gone.

Baling. To men in joy; but grief makes one hour ten.

(Richard II, I, iii, 258-60) The striking contrast between "time of sorrow" and "time of folly"

can be seen in The Rape of Lucrece:

Let him have time to mark how slow time goes In time of sorrow, and how swift and short

His time of folly and his time of sport. . . . (11, 990-92)

Although Time's foot is "inaudible and noiseless," it is obvious that he "travels in divers paces with divers persons." To those who are in bitter grief he goes slow; to lovers who long for reunion he walks on crutches. On the contrary, to men in joy he is swift and short;

with a thief sent to the gallows; he gallops and to the poet who watches the day of youth passing into sullied night, he is "swift- footed" and "never-resting." Thus it will be seen that the subjective relativity in the measurement of time is a recurrent, though by no means the most important, theme in Shakespeare.

We shall now pass to an examination of the figure of Time making wrinkles in beauty's brow. Such words as trench, furrow, paral- lel, and wrinkle are not used for nothing in the sonnets. Claes Schaar, comparing Shakespeare with Daniel, makes this observation:

Shakespeare uses descriptions of wrinkles in connection with the theme of the transitoriness of beauty, while Daniel utilizes this detail when treating a quite different motif-the signs of the poet's hopeless pas- sion."19 In Sonnet 2 we have

19. Claes Schaar, An Elizabethan Sonnet Proble.rn (Lund, Sweden: C.

,TV.

K.

Gleerup, 1960), p. 154.

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When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, And dig deep trenches in: thy beauty's field, Thy youth's proud livery, so gaz'cl on now, Will be a totter'cl weed of small worth held, and in Sonnet 60

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth, And delves the parallels in beauty's brow.

In the first quatrain of Sonnet 22 we can find a metaphorical use of furrow for "wrinkle":

My glass shall not persuade me I am old So long as youth and thou are of one date;

But when in thee time's furrows I behold Then look I death my days should expiate.

In Richard II Gaunt uses furrow as a verb meaning" to make wrin- kles in" when he says to King Richard:

Thou canst help time to furrow me with age, But stop no wrinkle in his pilgrimage. (1, iii, 229-30)

The OED cites this passage as the earliest example of furrow for the sense" to make wrinkles in." The earliest example of the noun furrow for" wrinkle" given in the dictionary is from Greene's Tul- lies Loue (1589). Since the dating of Shakespeare's sonnets is still in controversy, it seems difficult to ascertain whether or not Tullies Loue was earlier than Sonnet 22. In any case, however, we can be fairly certain that it was not until the end of the sixteenth century that the metaphorical use of furrow appeared. The reason for the ap- pearance of this metaphorical use is to be sought in the influence of Ovid. If we need any example, we may cite one from his Metamor- phoses:

... nor did she remove the cloud until she had adopted the guise of an old woman, streaking her temples with white hairs, and furrowing her skin with wrinkles.²⁰

It is worth while to point out that trench (1588), furrow (1589), ant 20. M. M. rnnes, trans., The Jl1etamorphoses of Ovid, p. 81.

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parallel (1591)21 developed their figurative sense of "wrinkle" almost simultaneously.

In Sonnet 63 the theme of the transiency of beauty is developed in connection with the description of wrinkles. The first quatrain reads:

Against my love shall be as I am now,

vVith Time's injurious hand crush'd and o'erworn;

When hours have drain'd his blood and fill'd his brow vVith lines and wrinkles ....

These lines closely resemble a passage in The Comedy of Errors (V, i, 298-300) wherein Aegeon, finding his elder son has no distinct re- membrance of him, deplores Time's cruelty:

01 grief hath chang'd me since you saw me last, And careful hours, with Time's deformed hand, Have written strange de features in my face.

In these instances it is not Time but "hours" that write wrinkles or defeatures in the face. The figure of Time engraving wrinkles in the face occurs in Sonnet 100, where the poet chides the Muse for having neglected her duty:

Rise, resty Ivluse, my love's sweet face survey, If Time have any wrinkle graven there,- If any, be a satire to decay

And make Time's spoils despised everywhere:

Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life;

So thou prevent'st his scythe and crooked knife.

Time is here variously described-as a wrinkle-engraver, a ravenous depredator, and a reaper with the scythe. These representations point to one dominant characteristic of time-its destructive power.

Needless to say, time is not always destructive and hateful. It may act not only as a destroyer but likewise as a breeder. Proteus in The Two Gentlemen of Verona is thinking of the productive, creative element of time when he says, "Time is the nurse and 21. The first date of the noun parallel given in the OED is 1551. The earliest example of parallel for "trench" is dated 1591. The sense of "wrinkle" is not listed in the dictionary, but it is not out of place to say that parallel in line 10 of Sonnet 60 is used in this figurative sense.

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breeder of all good" (Ill, i, 244). In The Rape of Lucrece we have Thou nursest all, and murderest all that are, (1. 929)

and in Sonnet 60 the line, "Time that gave doth now his gift confound," illustrates the dual function of time. If time does nothing but destroy without creating anything at all, who can speak of the

"womb of time," as in "There are many events in the womb of time which will be delivered" (Othello, I, iii, 378), or of Father Time?

Yet it must be admitted that what is emphasized again and again in the sonnets is the annihilating power of time. Everything, however enduring it may seem, must go among the "wastes" of time.

In this view of time can be seen one of the most striking Renais- sance attitudes toward time. Shakespeare's sonnets are the typical manifestation of time's inexorable progression toward annihilation.