Sonnets Blog 9/4/09

William Shakespeare’s sonnets twenty-nine and thirty offer corresponding perspectives on the issue of sorrow. In the twenty-ninth sonnet, Shakespeare’s sadness is mostly the result of fate, in which he feels he has been shortchanged in areas of his life. The lines, “When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes/I all alone beweep my outcast state,/And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,/And look upon myself, and curse my fate” Shakespeare shows his “disgrace with fortune” and how “deaf heaven” refuses to hear his cries of sadness and his longing for good fortune. (1,3) The narrator seems scornful and bitter about their fate, with an attempt to shift the blame on someone or something other than themselves. The narrator goes as far as saying “look upon myself, and curse my fate,” in essence giving up entirely and throwing one’s life up to fate.(4) Then in the next line the narrator “Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,” alluding to the fact that hope has been lost or taken by fate.(5) The narrator feels utterly helpless and in anguish over this lack of control of the future. However, the sonnet then takes a turn for the brighter side when the narrator remembers a person with the lines:

9. Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
10. Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
11. Like to the lark at break of day arising
12. From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
13. For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
14. That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

By recalling the times shared with this person, the narrator’s mood changes and they are taken back to this time when they were in a much better state and feeling better about life. This is evident in the line “for thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings.” (13)

Shakespeare’s thirtieth sonnet also deals with one in the depths of sorrow, and again ends with a lighter more hopeful note. The main theme of this sonnet is regret. The author displays this notion of regret in the lines:

2. I summon up remembrance of things past,
3. I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
4. And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
5. Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
6. For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
7. And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
8. And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:
9. Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

The line that states “I sigh at the lack of many a thing I sought,” (3) is the clearest representation of this deep regret expressed by the narrator. However, the last two lines of the poem, “But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,/All losses are restor’d and sorrows end.” (13, 14) Similarly to sonnet twenty nine, sonnet thirty ends with a sense of hopefulness and a longing for the past