Sonnet 90: Then Hate Me When Thou Wilt, if Ever, Now
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Then hate me when thou wilt, if ever, now:
Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross. Join with the spite of Fortune, make me bow, And do not drop in for an afterloss. Ah, do not, when my heart hath 'scaped this sorrow, Come in the rearward of a conquered woe, Give not a windy night a rainy morrow To linger out a purposed overthrow. If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last, When other petty griefs have done their spite, But in the onset come, so shall I taste At first the very worst of Fortune's might, And other strains of woe which now seem woe, Compared with loss of thee will not seem so. |
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Then hate me when thou wilt, if ever, now:
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The sonnet picks up on the closing line of Sonnet 89 – "For I must never love him whom thou dost hate" – and says to the young man: so if you are ever going to hate me, for which here again, we may read a possibly milder form of dislike than outright hatred, more in the realm of if you cease to love me, then do so now.
As John Kerrigan in the Penguin edition points out the 'wilt' here emphasises not so much what he calls a 'futurity', but the desire or willingness, should it ever come about, on the part of the young man to end the relationship with Shakespeare. |
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Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross.
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Do so – leave me – now, at a time when the whole world is determined to thwart or oppose everything I do.
There may well be an element of melodramatic hyperbole to this sentence, but the sentiment is clear: leave me now, while everything else also already goes against me. |
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Join with the spite of Fortune, make me bow,
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Join with the ill will and spiteful adversity that my luck, or more broadly chance in general and my destiny are crushing me with, and, like my bad luck, make me bow to the circumstances that keep me down as I subject myself to this hardship...
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And do not drop in for an afterloss.
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...and do not fall down on me with your own calamity to inflict on me a further loss after I've already sustained all these other defeats.
Editors are in agreement that 'drop in' as we understand it today, to mean 'call in casually' or 'to pay a casual visit' does not apply here, since this usage only comes into play approximately a hundred years after Shakespeare composes this sonnet. So Shakespeare here is not saying: don't stop by as you would for a chat and a pint of ale and almost accidentally make things a bit worse than they already were, he is saying, don't drop down on me like a further catastrophe from heaven, after everything else I've had to put up with. |
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Ah, do not, when my heart hath 'scaped this sorrow,
Come in the rearward of conquered woe, |
Do not, at some point in the near or even intermediate future when my heart has escaped from this current sorrow, meaning when I have dealt with and moved on from all the adversities that vex me and hold me down today, come along like the rearguard of an army of woes that I by then will have conquered or will think I had.
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Give not a windy night a rainy morrow
To linger out a purposed overthrow. |
And do not let this windy night that I am living through be followed by an even worse morning, by metaphorically raining on me with your bad news after this storm has passed, and in doing so prolong or protract this destruction of mine that is clearly intended either by Fortune or by you or, as would invariably be the case, by both.
This is generally accepted to be a reference to the proverb "A blustering night, a fair day," which you also see rendered as "a blustering night, a fair day follows" or "a blustering night promises a fair day," and so Shakespeare here insists that what he should be allowed to hope for is a brighter day to follow this time of challenges, not a further calamity. |
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If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,
When other petty griefs have done their spite, |
If you are going to leave me then do not leave me last, when other, smaller and by comparison insignificant sorrows or problems have done their damage or vexation...
The implication is, of course, that all and any other difficulties pale into insignificance as compared to the young man leaving Shakespeare, and he will spell this out for us in just a moment. |
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But in the onset come, so shall I taste
At first the very worst of Fortune's might, |
But come with your bad news now in the onset of this battle that I am fighting against adversity, so that I will be able to get a full flavour of how powerful and destructive Fortune can be.
In other words: if you are going to leave me, get it over and done with, so that the worst for me is over. |
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And other strains of woe which now seem woe,
Compared with loss of thee will not seem so. |
And other kinds of woe or sorrow, which currently seem like problems, will, compared with losing you, not feel like hardship any longer.
It is a sentiment that nearly 400 years later Prince expressed so eloquently in his song that was then turned into a massive hit by Sinéad O'Connor: Nothing Compares 2 U, and so compared with the loss of you, everything else just turns trivial. |
Sonnet 90 is the third of three poems that form a 'group within a group', purporting to accept, even support, any decision the young man may wish to take to leave his poet lover, for whatever reason he deems justified. Its principal message is straightforward: if you are going to leave me, then do it now, while everything else is going against me anyway; and with this emphasis on what 'now' is like for William Shakespeare, it sheds a fairly powerful light on Shakespeare's position – or at the very least on how he perceives his position – as he writes this sonnet and the ones that accompany it.
Perhaps the most striking thing about Sonnet 90 is its simplicity. Its honesty. Its straightforwardness. There are no complex double or triple layerings of meanings, there is no irony and no sarcasm – rare as they really are in Shakespeare anyway – there is no joyous wordplay for sure, there is no showing off, and no holding back either. There is a slightly sophisticated metaphor that probably puzzles today's readers more than it needs to, mainly because we are not familiar with the word 'afterloss'; but it is this not a problematic term over which we have to scratch our heads unduly. The sonnet can – as we just did – be summed up in one sentence, and if on previous occasions we have mildly upbraided – or maybe teased – Shakespeare for being somewhat slapdash with his logic, the reasoning of this sonnet cannot be faulted: I don't want you to prolong my agony. The worst thing that can happen to me on top of everything else is that you leave me, so if you are going to leave me, then get it over and done with, because at least then I know the worst is over and I can then regroup and get on with my life.
And in this stance contained there are three valuable insights:
Firstly, from the way William Shakespeare is taking himself, his young man, and us through what in our last episode we referred to as 'oscillations', we get the firm impression that his young lover is toying with him. This would not be out of character. We have got to know this young man as fickle, somewhat self-obsessed, unfaithful, and needy. He also, very obviously, is beautiful, charming, delightful, intelligent, wealthy, well-connected, and quite possibly – although this has not been spelt out – on occasion extremely generous. But the behaviours he has already displayed or, depending a bit on which order of composition one espouses, is about to display – getting off with Shakespeare's mistress, keeping others 'all too near' while he's away from Shakespeare, discombobulating his poet lover by taking on another poet who also becomes, so we were led to believe, his lover – draw the portrait of a petulant, we might today say entitled, as well as in all likelihood titled and excessively privileged young man.
And so while we can't possibly know what, if anything, the young man has said or written to Shakespeare, what the sonnets in this group suggest is that the young man is exercising his power not by saying, 'I'm done here, it is over between us', but by expressing something along the lines of 'I can leave you any time you know. I don't need you anywhere near as much as you need me. There are other poets far better than you. And other lovers too. Don't you even dare to tell me what I can and can't do, I may just choose to dump you yet.' Because clearly, had the young man made an active decision to leave Shakespeare, then Shakespeare would not only not need to say, "Then leave me when thou wilt, if ever, now," he wouldn't be able to say so, because it would already have happened. And the next two sonnets will make it clearer still, that that isn't the case, that instead Shakespeare is kept dangling. And this, that he is kept dangling and not given a firm ground to stand on is equally clear: it would make zero sense for him to play through this potential breakup at all, let alone at such length and with such agitation, if it weren't an entirely realistic prospect.
Secondly, this whole group of sonnets, but very particularly Sonnet 90, illustrates in fairly stark terms the asymmetry of this relationship. This too does not come as a breathtaking surprise, we've had several indications of this being the case before, but here it is put into special relief: you are evidently thinking of leaving me, otherwise I would not need to worry about the possibility of you doing so, you may be on the point of 'hating' me, which is bad enough if it only means that you cease to love me, and which is positively dreadful if it means that you will actively despise me, and this is absolutely not the page I'm on; for me, this would constitute the "very worst of Fortune's might." As far as you're concerned, you can apparently take me or leave me, the world, we know, is your oyster, but the world I inhabit is "bent my deeds to cross," and losing you would be the worst of this, it would be the last straw.
And that takes us neatly to the third insight that Sonnet 90 offers: Shakespeare feels that Fortune is against him. This tallies with some earlier sonnets, most explicitly the magnificent rant of Sonnet 66, in the context of which we argued that in order for Shakespeare to lay on his displeasure with the world so thick he has to be fundamentally unhappy with his standing in that world. And this, we further posited at the time, would place that phase before the end of 1594, because from the end of 1594 onwards, things really start to look up for Shakespeare, at least professionally.
Here in Sonnet 90, William Shakespeare makes multiple references to things not going his way; we mentioned a couple of them a moment ago: "Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross," "the spite of Fortune," "other petty griefs have done their spite," and "other strains of woe."
We can't conclude from this with any level of certainty that Shakespeare finds himself in the same doldrums now as he did when he wrote Sonnet 66, and it is of course possible that even a successful poet and increasingly celebrated playwright may feel on occasion that the world is against him. Having said that, we may assume that Shakespeare, who we know is a prolific and fast writer, goes through phases during which he produces many sonnets in quick succession, especially at the time when the theatres are closed owing to the plague and he hasn't, therefore, any plays to write. And so it lies totally within the realms of possibility that all of these sonnets are indeed composed during the same few months at some point before the end of 1594. Edmondson Wells, incidentally, following Macdonald P Jackson in their reshuffling of the sonnets, place the whole Rival Poet Group of Sonnets 78 to 86 a little later, and that would budge up this group to follow on directly from Sonnets 61-77, which they all date as having been written between 1594-1595. Considering how imprecise the dating method employed by Macdonald P Jackson by necessity is, this could just about work, because plus minus a year or two has to be allowed for in any case by this approach, and that would then also position this phase in Shakespeare's life with its current crisis in the relationship with his young man before the end of 1594.
So does the young man turn his back on Shakespeare and 'hate him now'? Apparently not. The next six sonnets segue into what we have called something of a fightback, and while it is far from certain from these next ensuing poems that all will be well – Shakespeare is, after all, taking a great risk in admonishing the young man to the level he is building up to – the submissive stance adopted in Sonnets 88 to 90 now gradually gives way to a much more assertive posture which succeeds, if not perhaps in putting the young man in his place, which would be somewhat futile since his place in the world is so elevated anyway, then in holding up a mirror to him and reminding him that he too is by no means free from fault or flaw...
Perhaps the most striking thing about Sonnet 90 is its simplicity. Its honesty. Its straightforwardness. There are no complex double or triple layerings of meanings, there is no irony and no sarcasm – rare as they really are in Shakespeare anyway – there is no joyous wordplay for sure, there is no showing off, and no holding back either. There is a slightly sophisticated metaphor that probably puzzles today's readers more than it needs to, mainly because we are not familiar with the word 'afterloss'; but it is this not a problematic term over which we have to scratch our heads unduly. The sonnet can – as we just did – be summed up in one sentence, and if on previous occasions we have mildly upbraided – or maybe teased – Shakespeare for being somewhat slapdash with his logic, the reasoning of this sonnet cannot be faulted: I don't want you to prolong my agony. The worst thing that can happen to me on top of everything else is that you leave me, so if you are going to leave me, then get it over and done with, because at least then I know the worst is over and I can then regroup and get on with my life.
And in this stance contained there are three valuable insights:
Firstly, from the way William Shakespeare is taking himself, his young man, and us through what in our last episode we referred to as 'oscillations', we get the firm impression that his young lover is toying with him. This would not be out of character. We have got to know this young man as fickle, somewhat self-obsessed, unfaithful, and needy. He also, very obviously, is beautiful, charming, delightful, intelligent, wealthy, well-connected, and quite possibly – although this has not been spelt out – on occasion extremely generous. But the behaviours he has already displayed or, depending a bit on which order of composition one espouses, is about to display – getting off with Shakespeare's mistress, keeping others 'all too near' while he's away from Shakespeare, discombobulating his poet lover by taking on another poet who also becomes, so we were led to believe, his lover – draw the portrait of a petulant, we might today say entitled, as well as in all likelihood titled and excessively privileged young man.
And so while we can't possibly know what, if anything, the young man has said or written to Shakespeare, what the sonnets in this group suggest is that the young man is exercising his power not by saying, 'I'm done here, it is over between us', but by expressing something along the lines of 'I can leave you any time you know. I don't need you anywhere near as much as you need me. There are other poets far better than you. And other lovers too. Don't you even dare to tell me what I can and can't do, I may just choose to dump you yet.' Because clearly, had the young man made an active decision to leave Shakespeare, then Shakespeare would not only not need to say, "Then leave me when thou wilt, if ever, now," he wouldn't be able to say so, because it would already have happened. And the next two sonnets will make it clearer still, that that isn't the case, that instead Shakespeare is kept dangling. And this, that he is kept dangling and not given a firm ground to stand on is equally clear: it would make zero sense for him to play through this potential breakup at all, let alone at such length and with such agitation, if it weren't an entirely realistic prospect.
Secondly, this whole group of sonnets, but very particularly Sonnet 90, illustrates in fairly stark terms the asymmetry of this relationship. This too does not come as a breathtaking surprise, we've had several indications of this being the case before, but here it is put into special relief: you are evidently thinking of leaving me, otherwise I would not need to worry about the possibility of you doing so, you may be on the point of 'hating' me, which is bad enough if it only means that you cease to love me, and which is positively dreadful if it means that you will actively despise me, and this is absolutely not the page I'm on; for me, this would constitute the "very worst of Fortune's might." As far as you're concerned, you can apparently take me or leave me, the world, we know, is your oyster, but the world I inhabit is "bent my deeds to cross," and losing you would be the worst of this, it would be the last straw.
And that takes us neatly to the third insight that Sonnet 90 offers: Shakespeare feels that Fortune is against him. This tallies with some earlier sonnets, most explicitly the magnificent rant of Sonnet 66, in the context of which we argued that in order for Shakespeare to lay on his displeasure with the world so thick he has to be fundamentally unhappy with his standing in that world. And this, we further posited at the time, would place that phase before the end of 1594, because from the end of 1594 onwards, things really start to look up for Shakespeare, at least professionally.
Here in Sonnet 90, William Shakespeare makes multiple references to things not going his way; we mentioned a couple of them a moment ago: "Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross," "the spite of Fortune," "other petty griefs have done their spite," and "other strains of woe."
We can't conclude from this with any level of certainty that Shakespeare finds himself in the same doldrums now as he did when he wrote Sonnet 66, and it is of course possible that even a successful poet and increasingly celebrated playwright may feel on occasion that the world is against him. Having said that, we may assume that Shakespeare, who we know is a prolific and fast writer, goes through phases during which he produces many sonnets in quick succession, especially at the time when the theatres are closed owing to the plague and he hasn't, therefore, any plays to write. And so it lies totally within the realms of possibility that all of these sonnets are indeed composed during the same few months at some point before the end of 1594. Edmondson Wells, incidentally, following Macdonald P Jackson in their reshuffling of the sonnets, place the whole Rival Poet Group of Sonnets 78 to 86 a little later, and that would budge up this group to follow on directly from Sonnets 61-77, which they all date as having been written between 1594-1595. Considering how imprecise the dating method employed by Macdonald P Jackson by necessity is, this could just about work, because plus minus a year or two has to be allowed for in any case by this approach, and that would then also position this phase in Shakespeare's life with its current crisis in the relationship with his young man before the end of 1594.
So does the young man turn his back on Shakespeare and 'hate him now'? Apparently not. The next six sonnets segue into what we have called something of a fightback, and while it is far from certain from these next ensuing poems that all will be well – Shakespeare is, after all, taking a great risk in admonishing the young man to the level he is building up to – the submissive stance adopted in Sonnets 88 to 90 now gradually gives way to a much more assertive posture which succeeds, if not perhaps in putting the young man in his place, which would be somewhat futile since his place in the world is so elevated anyway, then in holding up a mirror to him and reminding him that he too is by no means free from fault or flaw...
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If you spot a mistake or if you have any comments or suggestions, please use the contact page to get in touch.
To be kept informed of developments, please subscribe to the email list.
If you would like to donate, you can do so here. Thank you!