How Does Shakespeare Use Ambiguous Diction In Sonnet 12

In Sonnet 12, Shakespeare uses contrasting imagery, ambiguous diction, and distinct alliteration in order to emphasize the decay of beauty and to convey the urgency of procreation. Firstly, Shakespeare creates contrasting images in Sonnet 12 that draws attention towards how easily beauty is lost to the world. Shakespeare, instead of highlighting the beauty and strength of nature, laments about how nature is wasting away. Early in the sonnet, tgohe speaker “[beholds] the violet past prime” (3). Violets, when in their prime, are beautiful flowers with vibrant colors that are appreciated by many. On the other hand, violets past their prime lose everything that had once made it desirable. Instead of full petals with a deep violet color, a wilted
Leading with the image of a naked and desolate tree, the reader feels sense of melancholy as the line looks back on how magnificent the tree used to be. The lively green leaves that others once enjoyed are now lost to the tree, and without the leaves, the tree is only a feeble shell of what it used to be. Through his use of such imagery, Shakespeare illustrates the impermanence of beauty in an understandable way. Thus, Shakespeare can solicit more visceral emotions from the audience that further directs their attention to the decline of beauty in the sonnet.
Secondly, Shakespeare employs ambiguous diction to add further depth and complexity to the various viewpoints concerning the world’s waning beauty. Often times in the sonnet, Shakespeare uses specific words that apply multiple meanings within the context of the phrase or sentence. For example, in the opening line, “when I do count the clock that tells the time” (1), the word count may change the meaning of
However, the pessimistic theme throughout the quatrains come together in the ending couplet. The macabre images provide reasons why the speaker insists on going out into the world and creating offspring. Of course people would go out and procreate if it meant preventing time and death from taking away the beauty of life. After all the imagery, diction, and alliteration had streamlined the reader’s focus to the hopelessness of death, the speaker then raises a more positive idea to combat the issue. The reader is then more inclined to accept the idea of procreation being the one solution to best time and death