SOURCE: Montgomery, Robert L. “The Present Tense: Shakespeare's Sonnets and the Menaces of Time.” The Ben Jonson Journal 6 (1999): 147-60.

In the following essay, Montgomery focuses on the depth and emotionalism of Shakespeare's conception of the present in the sonnets. In most of the sonnets to the young man, the critic contends, only the present is valued, though it is unstable and variable; by contrast, the imminent future promises only death, deprivation, and destruction.

In Shakespeare's Sonnets time has structural and emotional functions that make it the dominant and most persistent of all the issues the speaker has on his mind. As such it has drawn the attention of almost every reader and critic. In as succinct a summary of the theme as one could devise, John Kerrigan remarks that “On every side, its [time's] harsh calligraphy is seen.”¹ The repeated perception of its relentless and irreducible destructiveness conditions...