Simply so, who is being addressed in Sonnet 55?
"Sonnet 55" is part of William Shakespeare's famous sequence of 154 sonnets, first published in 1609. This sonnet, like many in that book, is addressed to a handsome young man known only as the "Fair Youth," and claims to be a "living record" of him—a tribute that will outlive any statue.
Subsequently, question is, what is the irony in Sonnet 55? This sonnet is about a young man and there may be an implication that a poem about an 'everyman' will outlast a monument to a ruler. War will destroy these monuments, but the irony is that “war's quick fires” cannot destroy the eternal memory recorded in poetry.
Correspondingly, what is the meaning of Sonnet 55?
the endurance of love
What does when wasteful war shall statues overturn mean?
When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils root out the work of masonry, These lines ramp up the imagery from stuff getting ruined by time to total destruction by war. "Wasteful war" means destructive war, like the kinda archaic meaning of "to lay waste."
