20 pages • 40 minutes read
William ShakespeareA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Readers of William Shakespeare’s plays, especially the comedies, will be aware of the many times he plays with the discrepancy between appearance and reality. Reality is not always what it seems, and this is an underlying motif in “Sonnet 104.” The fair youth possesses such beauty that the speaker does not want him to change in any way whatsoever, and he tries to convince himself that his friend might be exempt from the ravages of time, even though time is everywhere evident in the passage of the seasons. Nevertheless, in the three years of their friendship, the fair youth looks no different than he did on the day they met—or so it appears to the speaker.
As the sonnet progresses, however, the speaker is compelled to face up to the fact that the friend’s unchanging beauty is merely an appearance; it is not the reality. The dichotomy between appearance and reality strikes the speaker forcefully at the beginning of Line 9, in that regretful exclamation “Ah,” which conveys the sudden knowledge that he can no longer keep reality at bay. Appearances are deceptive—“mine eye may be deceived” (Line 12)—and in the end, they count for nothing.
By William Shakespeare
All's Well That Ends Well
William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream
William Shakespeare
Antony and Cleopatra
William Shakespeare
As You Like It
William Shakespeare
Coriolanus
William Shakespeare
Cymbeline
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
William Shakespeare
Henry IV, Part 1
William Shakespeare
Henry IV, Part 2
William Shakespeare
Henry V
William Shakespeare
Henry VIII
William Shakespeare
Henry VI, Part 1
William Shakespeare
Henry VI, Part 3
William Shakespeare
Julius Caesar
William Shakespeare
King John
William Shakespeare
King Lear
William Shakespeare
Love's Labour's Lost
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
William Shakespeare
Measure For Measure
William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
William Shakespeare