Sonnet 59

1. If there be nothing new, but that which is

2. Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,

3. Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss

4. The second burthen of a former child?

5. O, that record could with a backward look,

6. Even of five hundred courses of the Sun,

7. Show me your image in some antique book,

8. Since mind at first in character was done.

9. That I might see what the old world could say

10. To this composed wonder of your frame,

11. Whether we are mended, or whether better they,

12. Or whether revolution be the same.

13. O, sure I am, the wits of former days

14. To subjects worse have given admiring praise.

How They Might Look Back

Dedication: To Elizabeth

Oxford expressing the importance of the new things to stimulate the mind and asking Elizabeth to think the view of history back five hundred years hence. He none to subtlety reminding her of her child speculating how each will be viewed in the far future.

1st Quatrain: (1-4)

Explaining to Elizabeth the importance of the new and novel and pointing out that were it not for new then what would entertain us and provide us wonder in lines 1 and 2. That trying to create new overlooks the "former child" an allusion to Henry in lines 3 and 4.

2nd Quatrain: (5-8)

Asking Elizabeth what those 500 years in the past were likely to say about her and explaining again emphatically how she has acted on her initial instincts.

3rd Quatrain: (9-12)

Speculating on how history will be either better or worse and the view in retrospect.

couplet (13-14),

Slyly paying the complement that Elizabeth is worthy of praise because previous generations have probably given praise to subjects less worthy than she. Which is not to say of course that she is worthy, only that she would compare favorably to those that have received praise.


Commentary:

Oxford using the argument that if there were nothing new there would never be renewable for the obvious point of reminding Elizabeth of Henry. Which he specifically points out that a renewal of herself as monarch was supposed to be part of Henry’s purpose in line 4 with the “second burden of a former child?”. This rhetorical question also seems to elicit the point that Elizabeth had perhaps forgotten this since it has now been likely over twenty years since Henry’s birth. Oxford again using Henry as her metaphorical image again makes the point that Henry likely exceeds those that were praised so admiringly in antiquity.

The orthodoxy would have it that this sonnet is strictly about a generality of new being old and completely misses the almost transparent message of a “former child” told, which is the source of renewal to prevent the need for the story told in “some antique book”.

Vendler would have us believe that the poet speculates on a hypothetical persons such as the beloved of the poem existing previously and already written about would save the poet the “labor” for the invention because there would already be a description of the beloved. This the supposed meaning and purpose of the second burden of a former child. This is also the poet’s motivation supposedly to read his processor’s works. Thus the whole pretext of the sonnet is to know what the “old world” would have said of his beloved. However because he cannot, he must bear the burden himself and continue to wonder how his beauty compares to those of old.


Line 6 is generally presumed to suggest Shakespeare did not subscribe to Copernicus' helio-centric views but according to historian Robert Westman, there were not more then 10 countable "thinkers who chose to adopt the main claims of heliocentric theory" between 1543 and 1600. And apparently even Francis Bacon was one who remained unconvinced. However I might suggest that it might have just been deference to Queen Elizabeth's views in this case. While this is not terribly germane, perhaps the analogous problem with adoption of this theory might be suggestive of this general difficulty.