Patterns of Consolation in Shakespeare's Sonnets 1-126 | Conventional Consolation (Sonnets 1-18)
Conventional Consolation (Sonnets 1-18)
In the course of sonnets 1-18 Shakespeare shifts the argument from one very conventional consolation for the mutability of beauty to another. This shift is the first instance of an argumentative strategy typical of the first subsequence: when a consoling argument fails to satisfy, Shakespeare's speaker alters the terms of the problem of mutability so as to derive a new means of comfort. The earliest sonnets in this group make the consolatory argument that the beauty of the young man whom the poems address will live on in his offspring. The speaker often aims this argument directly at the youth, who does not realize that fathering a child will provide his only consolation for old age and death. Shakespeare's argument for the consolatory aspect of procreation gradually gives way to a second consolatory argument—that the young man's beauty will be preserved in the poet's verse. After the first seventeen sonnets, sonnet 18...
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