Sonnet 59
If there be nothing new, but that which is
time
history
originality
beauty
If there be nothing new, but that which is
Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,
Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss
The second burden of a former child!
O, that record could with a backward look,
Even of five hundred courses of the sun,
Show me your image in some antique book,
Since mind at first in character was done!
That I might see what the old world could say
To this composed wonder of your frame;
Whether we are mended, or whether better they,
Or whether revolution be the same.
O, sure I am, the wits of former days
To subjects worse have given admiring praise.
What It Means
Has all this been done before? If nothing is new under the sun, then maybe this face, this love, this poetry existed in some previous age. Shakespeare wonders what the ancient world wrote about beauty — did it look like this? He'd look up those old records to find out, but suspects the answer is no: what he has encountered has not been seen before, and the world before him was 'worse.'
Context
Part of the Fair Youth sequence. The meditation on originality and cyclical history is one of the more philosophical sonnets in the sequence.
Buy the Arden edition of the Sonnets on Amazon →
As an Amazon Associate, ShakespeareGo earns from qualifying purchases.