Literary Devices in Shakespeare's Sonnets

Sonnet 40 repeats the word, or variants of the word, “love” more than any other sonnet. By repeating the word “love” nine times, the speaker expresses his concerted, even obsessive, effort to regain his distant beloved after their separation in Sonnet 39.

The volta, which begins here at line nine, demonstrates the main theme of sonnet 39. Following the fair youth’s mistake, the speaker decides it is in both his and the fair youth’s best interests to separate. The volta demonstrates the dual nature of such a decision: the speaker is both tormented with the prospect of separating but knows that it is the right decision. The combination of the words “sour” and “sweet” in the following line, as in sonnet 35, highlight this dichotomy.

Through coordinating conjunctions like “although,” “though,” “yet,” “lest,” “nor,” “unless,” and “but,” the speaker demonstrates his hesitancy and uncertainty following the fair youth’s error. The speaker, unsure whether to be “one” or “twain” with the fair youth, peppers his diction with tentative language, revealing his inability to reach a concrete resolution.

As in Sonnet 33, the speaker employs imagery of storm clouds blemishing the “beauteous” day to mirror how the fair youth’s fault has cast clouds over their relationship. Although the fair youth repents, the speaker continues to shed tears “of pearl.” Pearls often represent wisdom gained through experience. Here they symbolize a penance for the fair youth’s sin. The speaker believes that although the fair youth has caused him pain, that pain is “ransom[ed],” or redeemed, by the youth’s tears.

Highlighted with the exclamation “O!”, line 9 marks the sonnet’s volta. As he morosely contemplates death and the loss of physical love between himself and the fair youth, the speaker prays that their love might survive through his poetry in an abstract sense. However, the inclusion of a quote in the following lines and the choice to use the word “vouchsafe”—which means to grant, either in a grateful or a condescending way—demonstrate irony in the speaker’s words. The speaker claims that others might write more stylish poetry, but that his should be appreciated for his honest words of love. Most modern readers will likely recognize the speaker’s self-deprecation as irony: after all, the sonnets demonstrate a high degree of literary and stylistic competency.

This sonnet suggests that through the fair youth, the speaker can harness all the love of his own past lovers. The fair youth’s bosom, “endeared with all hearts,” contains all of the love the speaker has previously experienced. This sentiment is finalized in line 14 when the speaker repeats the word “all” to demonstrate the circuitness and all-encompassing nature of love, which he envisions lies in the fair youth, himself, and all his past lovers.

The speaker employs anaphora, a literary tool whereby the first word of a phrase is repeated in successive clauses to add emphasis. Here, the use of the anaphora, which operates through the repetition of the word “And” at the beginning of lines three through twelve, demonstrate the magnitude of ill-wills the speaker endures. These challenges cause him to cry for “restful death.”

The sharp and sudden contrast, emphasized by the interjection of “O!” in line nine, alerts the reader to the volta, or turning point, of the sonnet. With this volta, the speaker resolves the sonnet on a more lighthearted note, wishing for the fair youth to find resolve and comfort even after the speaker dies.

The phrase “for I love you so” is striking in its simplicity. The speaker arrives at this phrase after the morbid imagery about the “vile world with vilest worms,” offering an unexpected turn of hope as the speaker comes to terms with his own death. The “sweet thoughts” in the following line are made all the sweeter against the backdrop of death and decay.

The consonance of three s sounds in "sweet," "birds," and "sang," helps to create the auditory imagery of birds chirping. The image of songbirds alludes to the joyful and poetically productive past that the speaker nostalgically laments.

In a continuation of Sonnets 97 and 98, Sonnet 99 associates the fair youth with the natural beauty of various flowers. Throughout the sonnet, the speaker alleges that the violet, personified as a “sweet thief,” has dipped its petals into the fair youth’s veins and stolen his color and vitality. Unlike the previous sonnets, however, Sonnet 99 stands out for its 15-line structure. The sonnet opens with a quintain, or five line stanza, thus forming a fifteen line sonnet. Readers and scholars can only conjecture for the reason behind this anomaly.

In order to bookend Sonnets 91-96, which deal with the fair youth’s faults, the speaker employs the same literary device used at the beginning of the sequence: anaphora with the repetition of the word “some” at the beginning of successive clauses. This literary device demonstrates society’s perception of the fair youth as someone who is sexually immodest.

The first stanza of Sonnet 91 is built on anaphora, a literary device whereby the speaker repeats the same word at the beginning of successive clauses. Here, the speaker distinguishes himself from those—or “some”—who find pleasure in material things like clothes or horses. Unlike “some” people, the speaker derives his joy from the love he shares with the fair youth. In the second and third stanzas, the speaker disparages their material obsessions. However, the sonnet takes on a more menacing tone in the final couplet. His love for the fair youth, unlike material love, is easily retractable. The fair youth, as readers may observe in the “Rival Poet” sequence, can easily “take” his love away.

Sonnet 138 deals with the common literary trope of transgression and lying. The speaker readily admits in the first line that he knows his lover is lying, but he stays quiet and the “truth [remains] suppressed.” However, he admits that he is lying as well. At the end of the sonnet, the speaker employs a double entendre to highlight how he and his love “lie” together and therefore feel mutually “flatter’d” despite their obvious faults.