Sonnet 99 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet

William 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 ...

. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. The sonnet is generally grouped with the preceding two in the sequence, with which it shares a dominant trope and image set: the beloved is described in terms of, and judged superior to, nature and its beauties.

Paraphrase

I criticized the violet, telling it that it had stolen its sweet smell from my beloved's breath, and its purple color from my beloved's veins. I told the

lily ''Lilium'' () is a genus of herbaceous flowering plants growing from bulbs, all with large prominent flowers. They are the true lilies. Lilies are a group of flowering plants which are important in culture and literature in much of the world. M ...

it had stolen the whiteness of your (that is, the beloved's) hands, and

marjoram Marjoram (; ''Origanum majorana'') is a cold-sensitive perennial herb or undershrub with sweet pine and citrus flavours. In some Middle Eastern countries, marjoram is synonymous with oregano, and there the names sweet marjoram and knotted marj ...

had stolen the beloved's hair; a third flower had stolen from both; in fact, all flowers had stolen something from the person of the beloved.

Structure

Sonnet 99 is one of only three irregular sonnets in Shakespeare's sequence (the others being Sonnet 126 which structurally is not a sonnet at all but rather a poem of six pentameter couplets, and Sonnet 145 which has the typical rhyme scheme but is written in

iambic tetrameter Iambic tetrameter is a poetic meter in ancient Greek and Latin poetry; as the name of ''a rhythm'', iambic tetrameter consists of four metra, each metron being of the form , x – u – , , consisting of a spondee and an iamb, or two iambs. Ther ...

). Whereas a typical English or Shakespearean sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet, with the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, this sonnet begins with a quintain yielding the rhyme scheme ABABA CDCD EFEF GG. Like the other sonnets (except Sonnet 145) it is composed 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 prefi ...

based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The 8th line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:

  ×  / ×   /   ×  / ×    /     ×    / 
The roses fearfully on thorns did stand, (99.8)

:/ = ''ictus'', a metrically strong syllabic position. × = ''nonictus''. The meter demands several variant pronunciations: line 1's "violet" is pronounced with three syllables, line 6's "condemnèd" also with three, line 11's "robbery" with two. Line 14's "flowers" is pronounced as one syllable, and "stol'n" always appears as one syllable (in lines 7, 10, and 15). Line 13's "eate" equals modern past tense "ate". As to its fifteen lines, sonnet structure has never been absolutely fixed, and Sidney Lee adduces many examples of fifteen line sonnets. An extra line is particularly common in linked sonnets, and this sonnet is linked to 98;

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ended 98 with a colon to demonstrate the connection. However, other scholars have remarked on the clumsiness of the first line and suggested that the

quarto Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...

text represents an unrevised draft that found its way into print.

Source and analysis

Edward Massey and others asserted that the poem was directly inspired by a poem in

Henry Constable Henry Constable (1562 – 9 October 1613) was an English poet, known particularly for ''Diana'', one of the first English sonnet sequences. In 1591 he converted to Catholicism, and lived in exile on the continent for some years. He returned to E ...

's ''Diana'' (1592); T. W. Baldwin rejected this claim while noting that the same Constable sonnet had inspired a passage in '' The Rape of Lucrece''. At any rate, the conceit is common, and parallels have been found in the poems by Edmund Spenser,

Thomas Campion Thomas Campion (sometimes spelled Campian; 12 February 1567 – 1 March 1620) was an English composer, poet, and physician. He was born in London, educated at Cambridge, studied law in Gray's inn. He wrote over a hundred lute songs, masques ...

, and others. George Wilson praised the poem as an example of synesthesia. The sonnet has attracted some attention as one of those that appears to provide clues about the historical identity of Shakespeare's subject (on the traditional assumption that the poems are in some sense autobiographical). In 1904, C. C. Stopes noted the existence of a portrait of

Southampton Southampton () is a port city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. It is located approximately south-west of London and west of Portsmouth. The city forms part of the South Hampshire built-up area, which also covers Po ...

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in which his hair curls in a manner similar to young marjoram. This analysis has been disputed by scholars who assert that smell, rather than appearance, is the primary referent of Shakespeare's line. Because of the extravagant praise of the beloved's body, some Victorian scholars were reluctant to believe that the poem was addressed to a man; current consensus, however, groups it with the other poems written to the young man.

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. {{DEFAULTSORT:Sonnet 099 British poems Sonnets by William Shakespeare