"A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME WOULD SMELL AS SWEET": RETHINKING THE IMAGERY OF THE ROSE IN SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS

Abstract

Shakespearean sonnets have myriads of symbols threading from one to another. Rose and canker, young man and dark lady, time, seasons, flowers - these are just a few of the numerous symbols Shakespeare uses in them, narrating a story of love and praise and life. Rose appears to be one of the most prominent of them, making people all over the world question: what could it mean? The most popular theory states that rose indicates sublime beauty and eternal youth and passionate love for the beloved. Rather than a symbol of poetical romance, I think that the rose imagery bears much more than that. This capstone argues that the rose is the representation of the poet himself, the marker of author's presence in own works, and that through the rose Shakespeare talks and devotes the sonnets' lines to himself delivering deep self-reflecting messages. The study of Shakespeare's sonnets is broad and well-researched. Yet, it somewhat lacks the variety in interpretation of the rose imagery. My project could contribute to widening this variety, proposing the new alternatives for the floral symbolism. This capstone project applies close reading of Shakespeare's sonnets, complemented by the historical, biological, psychological, and literary theories to disclose the imageries and elaborate their messages. The Shakespearean scholars' works will also be used to compare and contrast the interpretations of the rose. The analysis of the sonnets explores three main symbolic images that are mirror glass, rose, and rosewater, each of which complements each other. Mirror establishes the connection between the author (the addresser) and the "beloved" (the addressee) in a way that both addresser and addressee are demonstrated as the same person talking to himself in a reflection. The rose, which is used by the author as an almost a synonymic reference to the addressee, is observed. Rose here will be examined as the symbol of the author - it grows, it lives, ages and decays, bearing the beautiful virtues within and suffering from the canker of the humane vices. Finally, the rose remains the rose even after decay. It is distilled into the third symbol, that of fragrant rosewater, which reminds the people of the beauty and youth of the flower, just like the poet is distilled into the black ink on the paper which is saved as a poetic legacy for future generations. Shakespeare the Rose lives eternally in his sonnets up until our days, being the same old beautiful man he once was back then.