the theme of time in this sonnet. She expands on this by arguing that the sonnet revolves around the keyword "live". In quatrain 1, the focus is the word "outlive". In quatrain 2 it's "living"; in quatrain 3 "oblivious", and the couplet focuses on the word "live" itself. However, this raises the question of whether the young man actually continues to live bodily or if only his memory remains. There are references to being alive physically with active phrases like "you shall shine in these contents" and "'gainst death and all oblivious enmity / shall you pace forth", and also to living in memory: "the living record of your memory", and "your praise shall…find room…in the eyes of all posterity". Vendler argues that this question is answered by the couplet when it assigns "real" living to the day of the Last Judgment: "So till the judgment that your self arise / you live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes." A possible contemporary reference In the Folger Library, Robert Evans came across an epitaph that someone had written to the memory of Shakespeare. Evans could not find the verse recorded in various reference books. The epitaph was found on the last end page of a folio in the Folger collection. It is written in brown ink, in a secretary hand, which was a common 17th Century style of handwriting. It was written between two other epitaphs that are well known (including the one in the Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon where Shakespeare is buried). If it is authentic, it can be seen as another example indicating Shakespeare's regard among his contemporaries: The lines of the verse echo lines from sonnet 55, which the unknown author may have been recalling. (“So, till the judgement that yourself arise, / You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.”) Interpretations Richard Briers, for the 2002 compilation album, When Love Speaks (EMI Classics) References Further reading British poems Sonnets by William Shakespeare