Treatment of Nature in William Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Shakespeare’s sonnets revolved around the themes of love and friendship. The fair youth sonnets represent through their order the life cycle of man.

In most sonnets, nature provides the background, either by supplying the images or showing the objective co-relative for them. In his Comedies and Tragedies, Shakespeare showed his deep interest in the workings of the natural world. 

King Lear or As You Like It or A Midsummer Night’s Dream– everywhere, the world of nature features prominently. The sonnets are Shakespeare’s attains at depicting the psychological propensities of human beings, caught in the web of romance, friendship, jealousy, and other motives.

Nature plays a vital role in the sonnets by supplying the back-drop or the psycho-drama of the feelings. Shakespeare also emphasized the inevitability of death in his sonnets through nature-imagery.

Shakespeare’s Nature-Imagery in Sonnets Inspires Love And Beauty

One of many exciting elements in Shakespeare’s sonnet is nature-imagery. Nature’s loveliness and plenitude attracted Shakespeare more than her violent or tempestuous aspects.

In various sonnets, Shakespeare refers to the morning beauty of nature and the rosy life of colors spread on the earth and the clouds. A few examples:

“Lo, in the orient when the gracious light

Lifts up his burning head, each under eye”

                        (Sonnet-7)

“Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;.”

                        (Sonnet-29)

“Full many a glorious morning have I seen

Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,

Kissing with golden face the meadows green,

Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;.”

                        (Sonnet-33)

William Shakespeare

Shakespeare skillfully relates the description of nature to his theme. For example, in sonnet 7, he uses the example of the morning glory in order to persuade his friend to get married.

His argument runs thus; people gaze at the sun and worship its glory when it rises in the morning; they still worship its splendor when it is noontime, and it has reached the highest point in the sky.

However, nobody bothers about the sun when it is setting like-wise the poet’s friend will be ignored or forgotten after his death unless he has a son to perpetuate his name.

The Beauty of Flowers in Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Another aspect of nature that attracts Shakespeare is the evanescence of the beauty of flowers. The rose, the violet, and lily are constantly referred to for their immaculate beauty and short-lividness.

Shakespeare sees the mutability of human existence reflected in the transience of these flowers. The natural world is, in this way, closely integrated into the texture of the poet’s thought.

In sonnet 12, for example, he talks about the passage of time and the decline of all things:

When I behold the violet past prime,

And sable curls all silver’d over with white;

When lofty trees I see barren of leaves

Which erst from heat did canopy the head,

And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves.

Sonnet 12, William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare’s Comparison between Summer’s Day And His Friend’s Beauty

Another reference to nature comes in sonnet 18, where the poet compares his friend’s beauty with summer’s day and finds the former lovelier and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling birds of may

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

Sonnet 18, William Shakespeare.

Nature sometimes becomes a medium of the poet’s hyperbolic praise of his friend. In sonnet 28, for example, the poet tries to flatter the day by saying that it is bright by his friend’s presence even when there are clouds in the sky.

The cloud comes back in sonnet 33, one of the passionate sonnets in the cycle.

Shakespeare Uses Seasons to Represent Emotions in Sonnets

The seasons attract Shakespeare’s attention in some of the sonnets. The spring and the winter often represent antithetical and antagonistic among the seasons. In sonnet 98, the spring season is given color of grief because the poet was absent from his friend:

When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,

Hath put a spirit of youth in everything.

Sonnet 98, William Shakespeare.

However, neither the bird’s song nor the sweet smell of different flowers with their many colors could put the poet in a mood of joy or stimulate him.

Moreover, it did not he fed any surprise to see the whiteness of the Lily, with the friend away from the poet, it still seemed winter to the poet even though it was Spring.

Winter figures prominently in sonnet 73, where the poet describes the natural scene with a kind of accuracy that reminds us of Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind.’

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold…

Sonnet 73, William Shakespeare.

One may compare the poet’s condition with the winter scene of desolation. In this scene, the desolate picture of desolation becomes a corollary of Shakespeare’s old age, when one by one, all his abilities will leave him like the autumnal leaves.

Final Thoughts

Shakespeare’s sonnets are interesting for their varied appeal to our aesthetic sense.

The natural world with its flowers and foliage, the sun and the stars, the revolution of time, and the cycle of the seasons come alive in the sonnets of Shakespeare.

Leave a Comment