Sonnet 73
Sonnet 73 surfaces across two Taylor Swift songs, through thematic echo.
Appears in 2 songs
Associated with William Shakespeare
“as the decade would play us for fools”
Uncle Jerry quotes Sonnet 73's opening as one of several Shakespeare sonnets demonstrating the same personified, destructive treatment of time that Taylor uses when she writes 'the decade would play us for fools'. He reads several lines aloud, emphasising how Shakespeare gives three different examples of time passing into old age.
“From sprinkler splashes to fireplace ashes”
Uncle Jerry draws a parallel between the 'fireplace ashes' imagery in Taylor's pre-chorus and the third stanza of Shakespeare's Sonnet 73, which uses ashes as a mortality image: the logs of youth consumed, leaving only grey ashes. He notes both works use ashes to represent the passage from youth to old age and mortality, though he frames this as a thematic parallel rather than a direct Taylor allusion.