SONNETCAST
  • Home
  • About
  • OVERVIEW
    • Introduction
    • The Procreation Sonnets
    • Special Guest: Professor Stephen Regan – The Sonnet as a Poetic Form
    • Special Guests: Sir Stanley Wells and Paul Edmondson – The Order of the Sonnets
    • The Halfway Point Summary
    • The Rival Poet
    • Special Guest: Professor Gabriel Egan – Computational Approaches to the Study of Shakespeare
    • Special Guest: Professor Abigail Rokison-Woodall – Speaking Shakespeare
    • Special Guest: Professor David Crystal – Original Pronunciation
    • The Fair Youth
  • THE SONNETS
    • Sonnet 1: From Fairest Creatures We Desire Increase
    • Sonnet 2: When Forty Winters Shall Besiege Thy Brow
    • Sonnet 3: Look in Thy Glass and Tell the Face Thou Viewest
    • Sonnet 4: Unthrifty Loveliness, Why Dost Thou Spend
    • Sonnet 5: Those Hours That With Gentle Work Did Frame
    • Sonnet 6: Then Let Not Winter's Ragged Hand Deface
    • Sonnet 7: Lo! In the Orient When the Gracious Light
    • Sonnet 8: Music to Hear, Why Hearst Thou Music Sadly?
    • Sonnet 9: Is it for Fear to Wet a Widow's Eye
    • Sonnet 10: For Shame Deny That Thou Bearst Love to Any
    • Sonnet 11: As Fast as Thou Shalt Wane, So Fast Thou Growst
    • Sonnet 12: When I Do Count the Clock that Tells the Time
    • Sonnet 13: O That You Were Yourself, But Love, You Are
    • Sonnet 14: Not From the Stars Do I My Judgement Pluck
    • Sonnet 15: When I Consider Every Thing That Grows
    • Sonnet 16: But Wherefore Do Not You a Mightier Way
    • Sonnet 17: Who Will Believe My Verse in Time to Come
    • Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day
    • Sonnet 19: Devouring Time, Blunt Thou the Lion's Paws
    • Sonnet 20: A Woman's Face, With Nature's Own Hand Painted
    • Sonnet 21: So Is it Not With Me as With That Muse
    • Sonnet 22: My Glass Shall Not Persuade Me I Am Old
    • Sonnet 23: As an Unperfect Actor on the Stage
    • Sonnet 24: Mine Eye Hath Played the Painter and Hath Stelled
    • Sonnet 25: Let Those Who Are in Favour With Their Stars
    • Sonnet 26: Lord of My Love to Whom in Vassalage
    • Sonnet 27: Weary With Toil, I Haste Me to My Bed
    • Sonnet 28: How Can I Then Return in Happy Plight
    • Sonnet 29: When in Disgrace With Fortune and Men's Eyes
    • Sonnet 30: When to the Sessions of Sweet Silent Thought
    • Sonnet 31: Thy Bosom Is Endeared With All Hearts
    • Sonnet 32: If Thou Survive My Well-Contented Day
    • Sonnet 33: Full Many a Glorious Morning Have I Seen
    • Sonnet 34: Why Didst Thou Promise Such a Beauteous Day
    • Sonnet 35: No More Be Grieved at That Which Thou Hast Done
    • Sonnet 36: Let Me Confess That We Two Must Be Twain
    • Sonnet 37: As a Decrepit Father Takes Delight
    • Sonnet 38: How Can My Muse Want Subject to Invent
    • Sonnet 39: O How Thy Worth With Manners May I Sing
    • Sonnet 40: Take All My Loves, My Love, Yea Take Them All
    • Sonnet 41: Those Pretty Wrongs That Liberty Commits
    • Sonnet 42: That Thou Hast Her, it Is Not All My Grief
    • Sonnet 43: When Most I Wink, Then Do Mine Eyes Best See
    • Sonnet 44: If the Dull Substance of My Flesh Were Thought
    • Sonnet 45: The Other Two, Slight Air and Purging Fire
    • Sonnet 46: Mine Eye and Heart Are at a Mortal War
    • Sonnet 47: Betwixt Mine Eye and Heart a League Is Took
    • Sonnet 48: How Careful Was I When I Took My Way
    • Sonnet 49: Against That Time, if Ever That Time Come
    • Sonnet 50: How Heavy Do I Journey on the Way
    • Sonnet 51: Thus Can My Love Excuse the Slow Offence
    • Sonnet 52: So Am I as the Rich, Whose Blessed Key
    • Sonnet 53: What Is Your Substance, Whereof Are You Made
    • Sonnet 54: O How Much More Doth Beauty Beauteous Seem
    • Sonnet 55: Not Marble, Nor the Gilded Monuments
    • Sonnet 56: Sweet Love, Renew Thy Force, Be it Not Said
    • Sonnet 57: Being Your Slave, What Should I Do But Tend
    • Sonnet 58: That God Forbid That Made Me First Your Slave
    • Sonnet 59: If There Be Nothing New, But That Which Is
    • Sonnet 60: Like as the Waves Make Towards the Pebbled Shore
    • Sonnet 61: Is it Thy Will Thy Image Should Keep Open
    • Sonnet 62: Sin of Self-Love Possesseth All Mine Eye
    • Sonnet 63: Against My Love Shall Be as I Am Now
    • Sonnet 64: When I have Seen by Time's Fell Hand Defaced
    • Sonnet 65: Since Brass, Nor Stone, Nor Earth, Nor Boundless Sea
    • Sonnet 66: Tired With All These, for Restful Death I Cry
    • Sonnet 67: Ah, Wherefore With Infection Should He Live
    • Sonnet 68: Thus Is His Cheek the Map of Days Outworn
    • Sonnet 69: Those Parts of Thee That The World's Eye Doth View
    • Sonnet 70: That Thou Are Blamed Shall Not Be Thy Defect
    • Sonnet 71: No Longer Mourn for Me When I Am Dead
    • Sonnet 72: O Lest the World Should Task You to Recite
    • Sonnet 73: That Time of Year Thou Mayst in Me Behold
    • Sonnet 74: But Be Contented When That Fell Arrest
    • Sonnet 75: So Are You to My Thoughts as Food to Life
    • Sonnet 76: Why Is My Verse so Barren of New Pride
    • Sonnet 77: Thy Glass Will Show Thee How Thy Beauties Wear
    • Sonnet 78: So Oft Have I Invoked Thee for My Muse
    • Sonnet 79: Whilst I Alone Did Call Upon Thy Aid
    • Sonnet 80: O How I Faint When I of You Do Write
    • Sonnet 81: Or I Shall Live Your Epitaph to Make
    • Sonnet 82: I Grant Thou Wert Not Married to My Muse
    • Sonnet 83: I Never Saw That You Did Painting Need
    • Sonnet 84: Who Is it That Says Most, Which Can Say More
    • Sonnet 85: My Tongue-Tied Muse in Manners Holds Her Still
    • Sonnet 86: Was it the Proud Full Sail of His Great Verse
    • Sonnet 87: Farewell, Thou Art Too Dear for My Posessing
    • Sonnet 88: When Thou Shalt Be Disposed to Set Me Light
    • Sonnet 89: Say That Thou Didst Forsake Me for Some Fault
    • Sonnet 90: Then Hate Me When Thou Wilt, if Ever, Now
    • Sonnet 91: Some Glory in Their Birth, Some in Their Skill
    • Sonnet 92: But Do Thy Worst to Steal Thyself Away
    • Sonnet 93: So Shall I Live, Supposing Thou Art True
    • Sonnet 94: They That Have Power to Hurt and Will Do None
    • Sonnet 95: How Sweet and Lovely Dost Thou Make the Shame
    • Sonnet 96: Some Say Thy Fault Is Youth, Some Wantonness
    • Sonnet 97: How Like a Winter Hath my Absence Been
    • Sonnet 98: From You Have I Been Absent in the Spring
    • Sonnet 99: The Forward Violet Thus Did I Chide
    • Sonnet 100: Where Art Thou, Muse, That Thou Forgetst so Long
    • Sonnet 101: O Truant Muse, What Shall Be Thy Amends
    • Sonnet 102: My Love Is Strengthened Though More Weak in Seeming
    • Sonnet 103: Alack, What Poverty My Muse Brings Forth
    • Sonnet 104: To Me, Fair Friend, You Never Can Be Old
    • Sonnet 105: Let Not My Love Be Called Idolatry
    • Sonnet 106: When in the Chronicle of Wasted Time
    • Sonnet 107: Not Mine Own Fears Nor the Prophetic Soul
    • Sonnet 108: What's in the Brain That Ink May Character
    • Sonnet 109: O Never Say That I Was False of Heart
    • Sonnet 110: Alas, 'Tis True I Have Gone Here and There
    • Sonnet 111: O For My Sake Do You With Fortune Chide
    • Sonnet 112: Your Love and Pity Doth Th'Impression Fill
    • Sonnet 113: Since I Left You, Mine Eye Is in My Mind
    • Sonnet 114: Or Whether Doth My Mind, Being Crowned With You
    • Sonnet 115: Those Lines That I Before Have Writ Do Lie
    • Sonnet 116: Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds
    • Sonnet 117: Accuse Me Thus, That I Have Scanted All
    • Sonnet 118: Like as to Make Our Appetites More Keen
    • Sonnet 119: What Potions Have I Drunk of Siren Tears
    • Sonnet 120: That You Were Once Unkind Befriends Me Now
    • Sonnet 121: Tis Better to Be Vile Than Vile Esteemed
    • Sonnet 122: Thy Gift, Thy Tables, Are Within My Brain
    • Sonnet 123: No! Time, Thou Shalt Not Boast That I Do Change
    • Sonnet 124: If My Dear Love Were But the Child of State
    • Sonnet 125: Were't Ought to Me I Bore the Canopy
    • Sonnet 126: O Thou, My Lovely Boy, Who in Thy Power
    • Sonnet 127: In the Old Age Black Was Not Counted Fair
    • Sonnet 128: How Oft When Thou, My Music, Music Playst
    • Sonnet 129: Th'Expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame
    • Sonnet 130: My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun
    • Sonnet 131: Thou Art as Tyrannous, so as Thou Art
    • Sonnet 132: Thine Eyes I love, and They, as Pitying Me
    • Sonnet 133: Beshrew That Heart That Makes My Heart to Groan
    • Sonnet 134: So Now I Have Confessed That He Is Thine
    • Sonnet 135: Whoever Hath Her Wish, Thou Hast Thy Will
    • Sonnet 136: If Thy Soul Check Thee That I Come so Near
    • Sonnet 137: Thou Blind Fool Love, What Dost Thou to Mine Eyes
    • Sonnet 138: When My Love Swears That She Is Made of Truth
    • Sonnet 139: O Call Not Me to Justify the Wrong
    • Sonnet 140: Be Wise as Thou Art Cruel, Do Not Press
    • Sonnet 141: In Faith, I Do Not Love Thee With Mine Eyes
    • Sonnet 142: Love Is My Sin, and Thy Dear Virtue Hate
    • Sonnet 143: Lo! As a Careful Housewife Runs to Catch
    • Sonnet 144: Two Loves I Have of Comfort and Despair
    • Sonnet 145: Those Lips That Love's Own Hand Did Make
    • Sonnet 146: Poor Soul, the Centre of My Sinful Earth
    • Sonnet 147: My Love Is as a Fever, Longing Still
    • Sonnet 148: O Me! What Eyes Hath Love Put in My Head
    • Sonnet 149: Canst Thou, O Cruel, Say I Love Thee Not
    • Sonnet 150: O From What Power Hast Thou This Powerful Might
    • Sonnet 151: Love Is too Young to Know What Conscience Is
    • Sonnet 152: In Loving Thee Thou Knowst I Am Forsworn
    • Sonnet 153: Cupid Laid by His Brand and Fell Asleep
    • Sonnet 154: The Little Love-God, Lying Once Asleep
  • THE SONNETEER
  • EVENTS
  • TEXT NOTE
  • CONTACT
    • SUBSCRIBE

Sonnet 58: That God Forbid That Made Me First Your Slave

That God forbid that made me first your slave
I should in thought control your times of pleasure,
Or at your hand th'account of hours to crave,
Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure.
O let me suffer, being at your beck,
Th'imprisoned absence of your liberty,
And, patience-tame to sufferance, bide each check
Without accusing you of injury.
Be where you list, your charter is so strong
That you yourself may privilege your time
To what you will: to you it doth belong,
Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime.
       I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,
       Not blame your pleasure, be it ill or well.
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LISTEN TO SONNETCAST EPISODE 58

That God forbid that made me first your slave
​I should in thought control your times of pleasure

God forbid – and that is the same God who made me your slave in the first place – that I should attempt to control your times of pleasure with or in my thoughts. Or put more simply: God forbid that I should try and work out what you get up to, since it is clearly none of my business...

Several editors suggest a reading of this first line as 'that particular god who first made me your slave', which would then imply Cupid or the god of love. But 'God' in the Quarto Edition is capitalised and the expression 'God forbid' features a further 21 times in Shakespeare's Complete Works, so reading this as an idiomatic expression makes much more sense to me.
Or at your hand th'account of hours to crave,
​Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure.
...or that I should want an account or breakdown of how you spend your time, being, as I am, your servant and therefore bound to await your orders or to remain quite literally 'in waiting' until you have use of me.

While the entire tone of Sonnets 57 & 58 in their subordination to the young lover is reminiscent of Sonnet 26, which starts with the lines

Lord of my love to whom in vassalage
Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit,
 

​this here is the clearest echo we get from it, with William Shakespeare once again invoking the notion of the feudal vassal, who is bound to a lord or king in allegiance but in return receives certain rights and privileges and also protection.
O let me suffer, being at your beck,
​Th'imprisoned absence of your liberty

Being at your beck and call, let me suffer this feeling of a metaphorical imprisonment that I experience through your absence, which in turn is caused or licenced by your liberty...

A 'beck' is a nod or a wave that requests or demands someone's attention, as would be common of a lord or a lady, a king or a queen, to get their servant to do something. It stems from 'to beckon', which is to gesture or wave hither. A further dictionary definition (Oxford Dictionaries) renders it as "the slightest indication of will or command," which is of course exactly what such a gesture would suggest.

While the 'absence' of the young man cannot, of course, itself be imprisoned, Shakespeare seems to be using the word here to mean 'imposed' or to cause a feeling of imprisonment, which stands in such stark contrast to the young man's freedom to do as he pleases at any given time. 

There is also an elegant double meaning in 'absence of your liberty': it on the one hand suggests your absence away from me, which, as just noted, is a consequence of your liberty or freedom; but on the other hand it also can be read as the absence in my life of your levels of liberty or freedom, in other words, the freedom that I lack.

And 'liberty', beyond freedom, also references a libertine conduct, which once again would appear to suggest sexual wantonness.
And, patience-tame to sufferance, bide each check
​Without accusing you of injury.
...and endure each restraint on my liberty, rebuff, or even rebuke patiently and without accusing you of doing anything wrong.

​The string 'patience tame to sufferance', although it seems fairly clear what is meant by it, cannot be easily translated into contemporary prose, and the Quarto Edition's punctuation doesn't help. It goes:

And patience tame, to sufferance bide each check,

This yields several possible readings, none of which require a comma where it is, but all of which result in more or less the same effect.

Several editors assume that the subject is still the poet who bides each check, which would make 'patience tame to sufferance' a descriptive clause, which is why you will often see it – as here – bracketed by commas and the expression 'patience-tame' hyphenated as an adjective.

An equally valid reading comes about if we assume instead that the subject switches to patience, which would result in:

And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each check

whereby it is patience now that 'tame to sufferance' bides each check. 

Which still leaves the minor conundrum of what either 'patience-tame to sufferance' or 'tame to sufferance' exactly means: the implication is that either I, the poet, have been tamed to patiently endure the suffering that is imposed on me through your absence and your philandering, or that patience, which is in itself a virtue, is by nature tame and therefore able to endure suffering. But 'sufferance' also in itself means 'patient endurance' or 'long term suffering', so a strong sense is conveyed that William Shakespeare is used to the young man's whims and neglect.

'Bide' here simply means endure; and 'check', apart from the definitions already given, also invites a reading of 'stroke' or even setback: in Sonnet 15 we had

When I perceive that men as plants increase,
Cheered and checked even by the self-same sky


where 'checked' meant 'to hinder, to obstruct, to hold back' or 'to reduce', possibly even, in our understanding today, 'to put in place'.

PRONUNCIATION:
Note that 
sufferance here is pronounced as two syllables: [suff-rance].
Be where you list, your charter is so strong
That you yourself may privilege your time
To what you will, to you it doth belong,

Be wherever you want to be, your position in terms of your rights and entitlement is so strong that you yourself may decide how you use your time and may allocate it to whatever you choose, after all it belongs to you.

The verb 'to list' as well as the noun 'list' are archaic terms sadly no longer in use, to mean 'want' or 'like' for the verb and 'desire' or 'inclination' for the noun. 
​Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime.
...and because it belongs to you, and your 'charter of rights or titles' is as strong as it is, you may pardon yourself of any crime that you yourself happen to commit.

In other words: your freedom and indeed privilege in the world is such that you may go whithersoever you wish and spend time in whatever manner with whomsoever you choose, and if from this any 'crime' or offence or transgression results, then you yourself are entirely within your rights to pardon yourself for them.

The fact that 'crime' – which would suggest a rather strong offence or transgression – is even mentioned though suggests that Shakespeare clearly feels unease about the young man's conduct at his 'times of pleasure'...
       I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,
       Not blame your pleasure, be it ill or well.

I have to wait, although waiting in this way is hell for me, and I have no right to blame you for the pleasures you seek or pursue, be they now ill or well, meaning whether they are morally sound and permissible and in relation to me acceptable, or not.

Sonnet 58 continues from Sonnet 57 and elaborates on Shakespeare's startling sense of subservience to the young man. It simply picks up from the sentiment that "being your slave" I have to wait on and for you and affirms that in this lowly position I cannot presume to have any powers over your conduct or your whereabouts, and in fact I must not even attempt to gain any kind of control over this situation by thinking about what you are up to when you are away from me. 

The two sonnets forming a pair with one coherent argument, here they are back to back, as they belong:

​Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu.
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But like a sad slave stay and think of nought,
Save where you are, how happy you make those.
       So true a fool is love that in your will,
​       Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.

That God forbid that made me first your slave
I should in thought control your times of pleasure,
Or at your hand th'account of hours to crave,
Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure.
O let me suffer, being at your beck,
Th'imprisoned absence of your liberty,
And, patience-tame to sufferance, bide each check
Without accusing you of injury.
Be where you list, your charter is so strong
That you yourself may privilege your time
To what you will: to you it doth belong,
Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime.
       I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,
       Not blame your pleasure, be it ill or well.

If Sonnet 57 managed to end on a perhaps resigned but still conciliatory note that acknowledged how great a fool a love such as the one experienced by our poet can make of us, Sonnet 58 deepens the sense of servitude conveyed by Sonnet 57 and at the same time heightens the level of sarcasm we can hear.

As in Sonnet 57, we may need to be somewhat careful in just how much of such self-conscious self-awareness we read into these two sonnets, but while in Sonnet 57 we still felt we had at least a good enough reason to accept the distinct possibility that Shakespeare is in fact being entirely sincere, with Sonnet 58 this becomes increasingly difficult.

The opening salvo itself to us sounds somewhat over the top: “That God forbid!” We still use the expression, but rarely nowadays with innocent sincerity. This is not strictly the case in Shakespeare: as previously observed, he uses the phrase often in his plays and certainly not always – in fact not even predominantly – with irony or let alone sarcasm.

And so it is possible that the first quatrain of Sonnet 58 may well be taken at face value. We have speculated quite extensively by now about the type of person – and sporadically early on also about the identity of the person – these sonnets are addressed to or about and although to us today the notion – outside perhaps some fetish context – that someone would describe themselves as someone else’s ‘vassal’ is somewhat strange at best and absurd at worst, it is entirely possible that Shakespeare genuinely sees himself in relation to the young man as economically dependent, socially inferior, and therefore morally obliged to him.

During the second quatrain, our whispering doubts gain in volume. There is a difference between being someone’s liegeman or vassal who, after all, possesses a certain level of agency and autonomy, and being at someone’s beck, which implies much more the status of a servant or a footman. And then positioning this in so stark a contrast to the young man’s liberty, invoking a term quite so strong as ‘imprisoned’ allows at the very least a disquiet about this state of affairs to shine through. Still, it is really no more than a sense we are getting, and we keep having to remind ourselves that our sensitivities may have evolved some distance from where they would have been four hundred years ago in a society that was run as a near absolute monarchy with an almost entirely rigid class system.

The third quatrain though does away with anything resembling subtlety:

Be where you list, your charter is so strong
That you yourself may privilege your time
To what you will: to you it doth belong,


Superficially, there is not much to be argued with that: if the lover is a young nobleman and whether or not he should also happen to be a patron or a potential patron of Shakespeare’s, his charter – as in his right or entitlement – is indeed strong enough that he himself may privilege his own time to what he wants, because to him it does certainly mostly belong. But this is not just a poet speaking to an actual or potential patron, nor just a writer and actor speaking to, in all likelihood, a member of the aristocracy, this is a lover speaking to a lover. And in this constellation the sheer imbalance of power and, more to the point, voluntary commitment and offered care, doesn’t just irk, but it aches.

That said, it is the fourth and last line of the third quatrain and then the closing couplet that blow the lid off this barely contained casket of cavil:

Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime.
       I am to wait, though waiting so be hell
       Not blame your pleasure, be it ill or well.

‘Crime’ is a strong word, now as it was then. If someone needs to ‘pardon' themselves of ‘self-doing crime’ then that means they are either committing that sort of crime right now, or they are prone or likely to do so in the foreseeable future, or have done so in the more recent past, or quite likely both.

But I, the poet, have just been telling you, my lover, and myself, that it is not for me to even think about what you are up to, let alone criticise you for it. Now throwing into the equation the concept of crime rather undermines this self-sufficient, self-effacing stance and says, you may call it what you want, I still consider it an offence. And all I can do in response is wait, “though waiting so be hell” and not “blame your pleasure, be it” significantly, “ill or well.” This wording too therefore raises not just a remote possibility that something untoward may be going on while you are away from me, but that there is – if this sentence alone is anything to go by – a pretty much equal balance of probabilities of the pleasures you indulge in being ‘ill’ or ‘well’.

That then perhaps still poses the question: what are these ill pleasures? The mind does not need to boggle at this. We know from Sonnets 33 to 42 that this young man – always and still reasonably assuming it is the same young man – has been getting off not with just anybody, but with Shakespeare’s own mistress and there is virtually no strong contender for an ill pleasure other than further sexual encounters, with – as these two poems make clear – whomsoever the young man chooses. Nothing in this couple of poems suggests that this is the same woman as on said previous occasion, and no indication is given as to whether we are even to imagine this person or indeed these people to be male or female or quite possibly of an ambiguous gender.

Nor do we need to wonder and speculate a great deal how William Shakespeare feels about this. He is in hell. He says so. True, he also says that he is not to blame – for which read accuse or even suspect – his lover, but the uncertainty is obviously troubling him a great deal. It may not be killing him: he is alive, but he is barely kicking right now.

And there is an interesting gradient nuance built into the three quatrains of this poem. The first one ends on the word ‘leisure’ to rhyme with ‘pleasure’: nothing particularly noteworthy there and nothing that in and of itself needs to set alarm bells ringing: both the ‘pleasure’ and the ‘leisure’ could still be entirely innocent and quotidian.

The second quatrain ends on the word ‘injury’ to rhyme – not entirely smoothy or purely, it has to be said – with ‘liberty’. And although Shakespeare makes a point of saying that he is not to accuse the young man of ‘injury’, he still pairs the young man’s ‘liberty’ directly with just that: an injury to him, William Shakespeare. That, in and of itself, is telling: were the young man’s ‘liberty’ but the natural sense of freedom that, as Sonnet 41 even then somewhat disingenuously put it, “thy beauty and thy years full well befits,” quite apart from also matching the young man’s evident status, then injury would not come into consideration. There, in Sonnet 41, Shakespeare was quite understandably not happy that the young man’s ‘liberty’ had committed “those pretty wrongs” which were beyond doubt at the time, because they had involved a woman Shakespeare claimed as his.

Here, though, these ‘wrongs’ are no longer ‘pretty’. They are, and this is the extraordinary arc this sonnet spans, ‘self-doing crime’, now in a perfect rhyme with time. To what extent, if any, incidentally, the rhyme alignment is consciously significant we really can’t tell, and so it may be well to exercise a degree of caution here too and not read all too much into this. But the escalation from ‘leisure’ to ‘injury’ to ‘crime’ can hardly be ignored or dismissed: our Will is adding layer onto layer of discomfiture and virtually the only reasonable explanation I can think of for this is that he viscerally feels the pain.

How long this pain lasts and how it will be eased remains to be seen and is not something we can answer in one sentence, or even one paragraph, because what comes next are two reflections on time, both placed in relation to the young man, the first explicitly referring to his beauty, the second more generically to his worth, and then we need to take a step back and look at where we are, because while the series of sonnets continues and does so in a tone and manner that is entirely congruent with what has gone before so far, we need to acknowledge that there is then, after Sonnet 60, a first question mark over the sequence as we know it.

There is a theory that then disrupts the flow of the sonnets and posits a time of composition for the next batch that would place them before the ones we have encountered so far, and it this is a view that is adopted and respected enough among Shakespeare scholars for us to have to take it seriously and examine its plausibility and what it means for our understanding of the sonnets.

What is certain is that we are about to witness an audible key change and enter a phase of sonneteering that shows us a pensive, reflective, philosophical, but also furious and frustrated mind at work whose rage is not just with his lover’s independence, undependability and infidelity, but also with the world he inhabits as a whole. And so if you found anything about William Shakespeare’s sonnets fascinating so far, you are in for a treat, because a lot of the best – as in: most exciting, most thrilling, most extraordinary sonnet composing the English language has ever been gifted – is yet to come…

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©2022-25  |   SONNETCAST – WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS RECITED, REVEALED, RELIVED
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  • Home
  • About
  • OVERVIEW
    • Introduction
    • The Procreation Sonnets
    • Special Guest: Professor Stephen Regan – The Sonnet as a Poetic Form
    • Special Guests: Sir Stanley Wells and Paul Edmondson – The Order of the Sonnets
    • The Halfway Point Summary
    • The Rival Poet
    • Special Guest: Professor Gabriel Egan – Computational Approaches to the Study of Shakespeare
    • Special Guest: Professor Abigail Rokison-Woodall – Speaking Shakespeare
    • Special Guest: Professor David Crystal – Original Pronunciation
    • The Fair Youth
  • THE SONNETS
    • Sonnet 1: From Fairest Creatures We Desire Increase
    • Sonnet 2: When Forty Winters Shall Besiege Thy Brow
    • Sonnet 3: Look in Thy Glass and Tell the Face Thou Viewest
    • Sonnet 4: Unthrifty Loveliness, Why Dost Thou Spend
    • Sonnet 5: Those Hours That With Gentle Work Did Frame
    • Sonnet 6: Then Let Not Winter's Ragged Hand Deface
    • Sonnet 7: Lo! In the Orient When the Gracious Light
    • Sonnet 8: Music to Hear, Why Hearst Thou Music Sadly?
    • Sonnet 9: Is it for Fear to Wet a Widow's Eye
    • Sonnet 10: For Shame Deny That Thou Bearst Love to Any
    • Sonnet 11: As Fast as Thou Shalt Wane, So Fast Thou Growst
    • Sonnet 12: When I Do Count the Clock that Tells the Time
    • Sonnet 13: O That You Were Yourself, But Love, You Are
    • Sonnet 14: Not From the Stars Do I My Judgement Pluck
    • Sonnet 15: When I Consider Every Thing That Grows
    • Sonnet 16: But Wherefore Do Not You a Mightier Way
    • Sonnet 17: Who Will Believe My Verse in Time to Come
    • Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day
    • Sonnet 19: Devouring Time, Blunt Thou the Lion's Paws
    • Sonnet 20: A Woman's Face, With Nature's Own Hand Painted
    • Sonnet 21: So Is it Not With Me as With That Muse
    • Sonnet 22: My Glass Shall Not Persuade Me I Am Old
    • Sonnet 23: As an Unperfect Actor on the Stage
    • Sonnet 24: Mine Eye Hath Played the Painter and Hath Stelled
    • Sonnet 25: Let Those Who Are in Favour With Their Stars
    • Sonnet 26: Lord of My Love to Whom in Vassalage
    • Sonnet 27: Weary With Toil, I Haste Me to My Bed
    • Sonnet 28: How Can I Then Return in Happy Plight
    • Sonnet 29: When in Disgrace With Fortune and Men's Eyes
    • Sonnet 30: When to the Sessions of Sweet Silent Thought
    • Sonnet 31: Thy Bosom Is Endeared With All Hearts
    • Sonnet 32: If Thou Survive My Well-Contented Day
    • Sonnet 33: Full Many a Glorious Morning Have I Seen
    • Sonnet 34: Why Didst Thou Promise Such a Beauteous Day
    • Sonnet 35: No More Be Grieved at That Which Thou Hast Done
    • Sonnet 36: Let Me Confess That We Two Must Be Twain
    • Sonnet 37: As a Decrepit Father Takes Delight
    • Sonnet 38: How Can My Muse Want Subject to Invent
    • Sonnet 39: O How Thy Worth With Manners May I Sing
    • Sonnet 40: Take All My Loves, My Love, Yea Take Them All
    • Sonnet 41: Those Pretty Wrongs That Liberty Commits
    • Sonnet 42: That Thou Hast Her, it Is Not All My Grief
    • Sonnet 43: When Most I Wink, Then Do Mine Eyes Best See
    • Sonnet 44: If the Dull Substance of My Flesh Were Thought
    • Sonnet 45: The Other Two, Slight Air and Purging Fire
    • Sonnet 46: Mine Eye and Heart Are at a Mortal War
    • Sonnet 47: Betwixt Mine Eye and Heart a League Is Took
    • Sonnet 48: How Careful Was I When I Took My Way
    • Sonnet 49: Against That Time, if Ever That Time Come
    • Sonnet 50: How Heavy Do I Journey on the Way
    • Sonnet 51: Thus Can My Love Excuse the Slow Offence
    • Sonnet 52: So Am I as the Rich, Whose Blessed Key
    • Sonnet 53: What Is Your Substance, Whereof Are You Made
    • Sonnet 54: O How Much More Doth Beauty Beauteous Seem
    • Sonnet 55: Not Marble, Nor the Gilded Monuments
    • Sonnet 56: Sweet Love, Renew Thy Force, Be it Not Said
    • Sonnet 57: Being Your Slave, What Should I Do But Tend
    • Sonnet 58: That God Forbid That Made Me First Your Slave
    • Sonnet 59: If There Be Nothing New, But That Which Is
    • Sonnet 60: Like as the Waves Make Towards the Pebbled Shore
    • Sonnet 61: Is it Thy Will Thy Image Should Keep Open
    • Sonnet 62: Sin of Self-Love Possesseth All Mine Eye
    • Sonnet 63: Against My Love Shall Be as I Am Now
    • Sonnet 64: When I have Seen by Time's Fell Hand Defaced
    • Sonnet 65: Since Brass, Nor Stone, Nor Earth, Nor Boundless Sea
    • Sonnet 66: Tired With All These, for Restful Death I Cry
    • Sonnet 67: Ah, Wherefore With Infection Should He Live
    • Sonnet 68: Thus Is His Cheek the Map of Days Outworn
    • Sonnet 69: Those Parts of Thee That The World's Eye Doth View
    • Sonnet 70: That Thou Are Blamed Shall Not Be Thy Defect
    • Sonnet 71: No Longer Mourn for Me When I Am Dead
    • Sonnet 72: O Lest the World Should Task You to Recite
    • Sonnet 73: That Time of Year Thou Mayst in Me Behold
    • Sonnet 74: But Be Contented When That Fell Arrest
    • Sonnet 75: So Are You to My Thoughts as Food to Life
    • Sonnet 76: Why Is My Verse so Barren of New Pride
    • Sonnet 77: Thy Glass Will Show Thee How Thy Beauties Wear
    • Sonnet 78: So Oft Have I Invoked Thee for My Muse
    • Sonnet 79: Whilst I Alone Did Call Upon Thy Aid
    • Sonnet 80: O How I Faint When I of You Do Write
    • Sonnet 81: Or I Shall Live Your Epitaph to Make
    • Sonnet 82: I Grant Thou Wert Not Married to My Muse
    • Sonnet 83: I Never Saw That You Did Painting Need
    • Sonnet 84: Who Is it That Says Most, Which Can Say More
    • Sonnet 85: My Tongue-Tied Muse in Manners Holds Her Still
    • Sonnet 86: Was it the Proud Full Sail of His Great Verse
    • Sonnet 87: Farewell, Thou Art Too Dear for My Posessing
    • Sonnet 88: When Thou Shalt Be Disposed to Set Me Light
    • Sonnet 89: Say That Thou Didst Forsake Me for Some Fault
    • Sonnet 90: Then Hate Me When Thou Wilt, if Ever, Now
    • Sonnet 91: Some Glory in Their Birth, Some in Their Skill
    • Sonnet 92: But Do Thy Worst to Steal Thyself Away
    • Sonnet 93: So Shall I Live, Supposing Thou Art True
    • Sonnet 94: They That Have Power to Hurt and Will Do None
    • Sonnet 95: How Sweet and Lovely Dost Thou Make the Shame
    • Sonnet 96: Some Say Thy Fault Is Youth, Some Wantonness
    • Sonnet 97: How Like a Winter Hath my Absence Been
    • Sonnet 98: From You Have I Been Absent in the Spring
    • Sonnet 99: The Forward Violet Thus Did I Chide
    • Sonnet 100: Where Art Thou, Muse, That Thou Forgetst so Long
    • Sonnet 101: O Truant Muse, What Shall Be Thy Amends
    • Sonnet 102: My Love Is Strengthened Though More Weak in Seeming
    • Sonnet 103: Alack, What Poverty My Muse Brings Forth
    • Sonnet 104: To Me, Fair Friend, You Never Can Be Old
    • Sonnet 105: Let Not My Love Be Called Idolatry
    • Sonnet 106: When in the Chronicle of Wasted Time
    • Sonnet 107: Not Mine Own Fears Nor the Prophetic Soul
    • Sonnet 108: What's in the Brain That Ink May Character
    • Sonnet 109: O Never Say That I Was False of Heart
    • Sonnet 110: Alas, 'Tis True I Have Gone Here and There
    • Sonnet 111: O For My Sake Do You With Fortune Chide
    • Sonnet 112: Your Love and Pity Doth Th'Impression Fill
    • Sonnet 113: Since I Left You, Mine Eye Is in My Mind
    • Sonnet 114: Or Whether Doth My Mind, Being Crowned With You
    • Sonnet 115: Those Lines That I Before Have Writ Do Lie
    • Sonnet 116: Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds
    • Sonnet 117: Accuse Me Thus, That I Have Scanted All
    • Sonnet 118: Like as to Make Our Appetites More Keen
    • Sonnet 119: What Potions Have I Drunk of Siren Tears
    • Sonnet 120: That You Were Once Unkind Befriends Me Now
    • Sonnet 121: Tis Better to Be Vile Than Vile Esteemed
    • Sonnet 122: Thy Gift, Thy Tables, Are Within My Brain
    • Sonnet 123: No! Time, Thou Shalt Not Boast That I Do Change
    • Sonnet 124: If My Dear Love Were But the Child of State
    • Sonnet 125: Were't Ought to Me I Bore the Canopy
    • Sonnet 126: O Thou, My Lovely Boy, Who in Thy Power
    • Sonnet 127: In the Old Age Black Was Not Counted Fair
    • Sonnet 128: How Oft When Thou, My Music, Music Playst
    • Sonnet 129: Th'Expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame
    • Sonnet 130: My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun
    • Sonnet 131: Thou Art as Tyrannous, so as Thou Art
    • Sonnet 132: Thine Eyes I love, and They, as Pitying Me
    • Sonnet 133: Beshrew That Heart That Makes My Heart to Groan
    • Sonnet 134: So Now I Have Confessed That He Is Thine
    • Sonnet 135: Whoever Hath Her Wish, Thou Hast Thy Will
    • Sonnet 136: If Thy Soul Check Thee That I Come so Near
    • Sonnet 137: Thou Blind Fool Love, What Dost Thou to Mine Eyes
    • Sonnet 138: When My Love Swears That She Is Made of Truth
    • Sonnet 139: O Call Not Me to Justify the Wrong
    • Sonnet 140: Be Wise as Thou Art Cruel, Do Not Press
    • Sonnet 141: In Faith, I Do Not Love Thee With Mine Eyes
    • Sonnet 142: Love Is My Sin, and Thy Dear Virtue Hate
    • Sonnet 143: Lo! As a Careful Housewife Runs to Catch
    • Sonnet 144: Two Loves I Have of Comfort and Despair
    • Sonnet 145: Those Lips That Love's Own Hand Did Make
    • Sonnet 146: Poor Soul, the Centre of My Sinful Earth
    • Sonnet 147: My Love Is as a Fever, Longing Still
    • Sonnet 148: O Me! What Eyes Hath Love Put in My Head
    • Sonnet 149: Canst Thou, O Cruel, Say I Love Thee Not
    • Sonnet 150: O From What Power Hast Thou This Powerful Might
    • Sonnet 151: Love Is too Young to Know What Conscience Is
    • Sonnet 152: In Loving Thee Thou Knowst I Am Forsworn
    • Sonnet 153: Cupid Laid by His Brand and Fell Asleep
    • Sonnet 154: The Little Love-God, Lying Once Asleep
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