This is a very famous sonnet and has attracted a large body of commentary, see here for example. Something that has often struck me about this and several other of Shakespeare's sonnets is the way he paints a scene, with a structure like the classic foreground, middle ground and distant background. This is a formula often discussed in art or photography lessons. Shakespeare however starts his word painting from the top - the background - and moves our mental eyes downwards, ending with the gilded streams at our feet.
In fact this is the order in which I think I view a landscape painting; my eyes are drawn at first to the distance, and then I gradually focus on the parts of the composition representing the middle and near field.
The text above is based on the 1609 Quarto but I have made the punctuation more consistent. The image was AI generated courtesy of Bing.
Sonnet 33 - Shakespeare as a Painter
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This is a very famous sonnet and has attracted a large body of commentary, see here for example. Something that has often struck me about this and several other of Shakespeare's sonnets is the way he paints a scene, with a structure like the classic foreground, middle ground and distant background. This is a formula often discussed in art or photography lessons. Shakespeare however starts his word painting from the top - the background - and moves our mental eyes downwards, ending with the gilded streams at our feet.
In fact this is the order in which I think I view a landscape painting; my eyes are drawn at first to the distance, and then I gradually focus on the parts of the composition representing the middle and near field.
The text above is based on the 1609 Quarto but I have made the punctuation more consistent. The image was AI generated courtesy of Bing.