In a modern age with modern medicine, young people often do not think about death. That prospect is years away and for the most part there is nothing to worry about. As a result, young people rarely think about and rarely, if ever, write about death. It quickly becomes apparent then that William Shakespeare lived in a different time. Many of his early sonnets address and contemplate death, but why? Shakespeare lived in Elizabethan England at a time when the bubonic plague was still making its mark. A time when it was not common for people to live beyond what we consider middle age (Alchin). For Shakespeare, death was always a possibility and he knew that his youth would not be lived long. This constant concern with death manifests itself in many of his sonnets, but becomes especially evident in his twelfth sonnet, when a young William Shakespeare writes from the perspective of his deceased, reflecting on life and giving advice to his younger self on how to preserve his life. young. While this advice will come sooner or later, it will not be given quickly. Instead, Shakespeare uses the first two lines to present an older, actually deceased, version of him. Immediately in the first line Shakespeare uses the pronoun “I,” identifying that the sonnet and all of the imagery in it comes from Shakespeare's perspective. The age of this “I” begins to become clear when one takes into consideration an entire line, as Shakespeare writes, “When I count the clock that tells the hour.” Shakespeare chooses to begin this line, and therefore the entire sonnet, with the word “When,” demonstrating that the following images are not something that happens continuously or even often, but are things that happen at a particular time. He keeps repeating “when” throughout the sonnet, showing just how im…half of the paper…so” (line 14). In this last line, "he" and "him" refer to "Time", while "you" refers to the young Shakespeare. In the fourteenth line, the late Shakespeare explains his advice, saying that the children will continue to "brave" or fight against "Time", when Shakespeare is brought "hence" or finally cut down by death. Although it may have taken some time, the deceased narrator finally managed to give his final advice to a much younger Shakespeare. Old people are known to mentor young people, but these “old people” are typically not already dead. Even young people don't often contemplate their own deaths. William Shakespeare paid no attention to these norms while writing his twelfth sonnet. Shakespeare grew up completely surrounded by death, perhaps even fearing it, but he overcomes this fear, demonstrating how important and precious he considered his life and youth.