Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

's Sonnet 40 is one of the sequence addressed to a well-born, handsome young man to whom the speaker is devoted. In this poem, as in the others in this part of the sequence, the speaker expresses resentment of his beloved's power over him.

Paraphrase

Go and take all of my loves, my beloved—how would doing so enrich you? It would not give you anything you do not already have. All that I possessed was already yours before you took this. (The second

quatrain A quatrain is a type of stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines. Existing in a variety of forms, the quatrain appears in poems from the poetic traditions of various ancient civilizations including Persia, Ancient India, Ancient Gree ...

is obscure and contested.) If, instead of loving me, you love the person I love, I can't blame you, because you are merely taking advantage of my love. (For possible readings of lines 7–8, see below). Yet I forgive you, even though you steal the little that I have, and even though it is well known that an injury inflicted by a supposed lover is far worse than an insult from an enemy. Oh lustful grace (i.e., the beloved), in whom everything bad is made to look good, even if you kill me with these wrongs against me, I will not be your enemy.

Structure

Sonnet 40 is an English or Shakespearean

sonnet A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's inventio ...

, composed of three

s followed by a final

couplet A couplet is a pair of successive lines of metre in poetry. A couplet usually consists of two successive lines that rhyme and have the same metre. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open). In a formal (or closed) couplet, each of the ...

. It follows the typical

rhyme scheme A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes at the end of each line of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme; lines designated with the same letter all rhyme with each other. An example of the ABAB r ...

of the English sonnet, ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. It is written in

iambic pentameter Iambic pentameter () is a type of metric line used in traditional English poetry and verse drama. The term describes the rhythm, or meter, established by the words in that line; rhythm is measured in small groups of syllables called " feet". "Iam ...

, a type of poetic

metre The metre ( British spelling) or meter ( American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its pre ...

based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. Line four exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:

×    /    ×    /     × /     ×   /      ×   / 
All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more. (40.4)

All four lines in the second quatrain have a final extrametrical syllable or ''feminine ending'':

 ×   /   ×   /     ×    /    ×  /    × / (×) 
But yet be blam'd, if thou thy self deceivest (40.7)

:/ = ''ictus'', a metrically strong syllabic position. × = ''nonictus''. (×) = extrametrical syllable. In prose, which syllables receive emphasis within a string of monosyllables can be very open. The following two lines are ''mis- scanned'' by reversing every ictus/nonictus (except those on "before" which are lexically determined):

  /   ×     /    ×   /     ×    /   ×     ×  /
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?

 /  ×     /  ×      /    ×   /      ×   /    ×
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call; (40.2-3)

Although a little awkward, these emphases yield an acceptable prose sense; yet we can be quite sure they were not intended by Shakespeare. The following more likely scansion (which retains ''one'' reversal) shows how Shakespeare works ''with'' meter to convey meaning:

  ×   /    ×     /   /     ×    ×   /     ×  /
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?

 ×  /     ×  /     ×     /   ×      /   ×    /   
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call; (40.2-3)

Source and analysis

Commonly viewed as parallel to the situation in Sonnets

133 133 may refer to: *133 (number) *AD 133 *133 BC *133 (song) 133 may refer to: *133 (number) *AD 133 *133 BC __NOTOC__ Year 133 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Scaevola ...

, 134, and

144 144 may refer to: * 144 (number), the natural number following 143 and preceding 145 * AD 144, a year of the Julian calendar, in the second century AD * 144 BC, a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar * ''144'' (film), a 2015 Indian comedy * ''14 ...

, the sonnet appears in this light to reflect a situation in which the speaker's beloved has seduced the speaker's mistress. While the seeming specificity of the reference has tantalized biographical critics, it has also been likened (for instance, by Geoffrey Bullough) to the central situation of ''

The Two Gentlemen of Verona ''The Two Gentlemen of Verona'' is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1589 and 1593. It is considered by some to be Shakespeare's first play, and is often seen as showing his first tentative steps in laying ...

''. The situation described, if not wholly unique to Shakespeare, is at least highly unusual, as Sidney Lee notes. Parallels have been noted in

Petrarch Francesco Petrarca (; 20 July 1304 – 18/19 July 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch (), was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited ...

and in

Theodore Beza Theodore Beza ( la, Theodorus Beza; french: Théodore de Bèze or ''de Besze''; June 24, 1519 – October 13, 1605) was a French Calvinist Protestant theologian, reformer and scholar who played an important role in the Protestant Reformation ...

's ''Poematica'', but these are not as implicitly sexual as Shakespeare's poem. Line 5 is glossed by

Edward Dowden Edward Dowden (3 May 18434 April 1913) was an Irish critic, professor, and poet. Biography He was the son of John Wheeler Dowden, a merchant and landowner, and was born at Cork, three years after his brother John, who became Bishop of Edinbur ...

as "If for love of me thou receivest her whom I love";

George Wyndham George Wyndham, PC (29 August 1863 – 8 June 1913) was a British Conservative politician, statesman, man of letters, and one of The Souls. Background and education Wyndham was the elder son of the Honourable Percy Wyndham, third son of Ge ...

, though, has it "If, instead of my love, you take the woman whom I love." Line 8, the next vague line, has received even more varied interpretations. Dowden has it "Deceive yourself by an unlawful union while you refuse lawful wedlock"; Beeching has it "by taking in willfulness my mistress whom you yet do not love"; Lee says "'What thou refusest is that lascivious indulgence which in reality thou disdainest." C. C. Stopes relates the line to other sonnets written in condemnation of illicit lust.

Notes

References

*Baldwin, T. W. ''On the Literary Genetics of Shakespeare's Sonnets''. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1950. * Lee, Sidney. ''Elizabethan Sonnets''. Westminster: Constable, 1904. *Stopes, C. C. ''Shakespeare's Sonnets''. London: Alexander Morig, 1904. *Wilson, George. ''The Five Gateways of Knowledge''. Cambridge: Macmillan, 1856.

External links

Analysis
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sonnet 040 British poems Sonnets by William Shakespeare