each QUATRAIN (ll. 4, 8, 12) and in the fi nal line of the
COUPLET (l. 14). However, “one” also occurs phoneti-
cally or graphically in the words wondrous (ll. 6, 12)
and alone (l. 13). Taken together, these repetitions and
allusions clearly situate the sonnet as a song of praise
and a pledge of loyalty to the beloved. The sonnet also
clearly employs Neoplatonic devices, too. The poet
identifi es the beloved’s three qualities (fair, kind, and
true) as those of the Platonic Triad (the Beautiful, the
Good, the True), thereby opposing the Christian Trin-
ity with the classical emblem of the divine.
Overlooked and undervalued for its lack of a central
metaphor, image, and clear interpretation, this sonnet,
as the critic Helen Vendler and others have noted, is
frequently “dull,” “tautologous,” or “repetitive,” though
others clearly appreciate the poem, referring to it as
“witty,” “playful,” and even “charming.” Such differing
responses to the sonnet refl ect how diffi cult it has
proven to be for interpreters. Is it a serious defense
aimed at overcoming the accusation of idolatry? Or is it
a playful refutation meant to highlight poetic craft
through allusions to the doxology, Christian Trinitarian
theology, and the Platonic Triad? Although these two
interpretations are dichotomous, they are both contin-
gent on the reader’s ability to recognize the poetic allu-
sion to Christian doctrine and devotion in the sonnet.
See also SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM; SHAKESPEARE’S SON-
NETS (OVERVIEW).
James M. PalmerShakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnet 106 (“When in
the chronicle of wasted time”) WILLIAM SHAKE-
SPEARE (1599) Sonnet 106 describes what contem-
porary critics would call “the anxiety of infl uence.” In
addition to the many English SONNET SEQUENCEs, WIL-
LIAM SHAKESPEARE was familiar with classical, medieval,
and Renaissance ROMANCEs, many of them extremely
accomplished. As he did in Sonnet 53, in Sonnet 106
he responds in a witty way to the pressure exerted by
these literary forbears. In acknowledging the literary
past, Shakespeare almost reverts to an older SONNET
form, the ITALIAN (PETRARCHAN) SONNET, which, instead
of three QUATRAINs and a COUPLET, is made up of an
OCTAVE (the fi rst eight lines), which establishes a situa-
tion, and a SESTET (the fi nal six lines), which resolves it.
But Shakespeare manages to make it through only
seven lines before the topic shifts from love poetry of
the past to love of the young man in the present tense.
In terms of sense, if not of punctuation, Sonnet 106
can be divided into quatrains and a couplet, and it
employs the “when/then” structure Shakespeare uses
in Sonnets 2, 12, 15, 29, 30, 43, and elsewhere.
The SONNET opens with an ambiguous image of old
books, which the speaker calls “the chronicle of wasted
time” (l. 1). A CHRONICLE is an orderly chronological
record of past events; “wasted time” might mean time
that has passed, or it might refer to the decaying condi-
tion of the book containing the chronicle, but the
words also imply that there might be better ways to
spend time than pursuing unattainable lovers. In the
chronicle of wasted time, the speaker fi nds “descrip-
tions of the fairest wights” (l. 2), where wights means
people of either gender, and where the superlative
shows the limitations of history: it describes not every-
thing that happened, but only the best or most note-
worthy events, and not even the fairest wights can
survive time’s ravages. The speaker also fi nds “beauty
making beautiful old rhyme” (l. 3) in the literature of
the past, a function that the narrator has asserted the
young man’s beauty performs for these sonnets. The
old rhymes were written “In praise of ladies dead and
lovely knights” (l. 4), a line that neatly encapsulates the
sonnets’ misogyny: there are no living ladies addressed
in the fi rst 126, and the emphasis is on the lovely and
aristocratic young man, sometimes referred to as the
LOVELY BOY.
The “When” of the fi rst quatrain is answered by the
“Then” of the second: when reading old love poetry,
the poet fi nds “in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best” (l.
5) a prefi guration of the beauty of his subject. BLAZON
is a term adopted from heraldry, referring to the coat of
arms by which a knight is identifi ed, but for Elizabe-
than poets it meant a descriptive list of body parts. In
Sonnet 106, the narrator reads the descriptions other
poets wrote “Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow” (l.
6) and decides what the poets of the past were trying to
capture, what “their antique pen would have expressed”
(l. 7), is the perfect beauty of the young man—“such
beauty as you master now” (l. 8). Poets were often386 SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS: SONNET 106