Sonnet 29

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,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
I haply think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
  For thy sweet love rememb'red such wealth brings,
  That then I scorn to change my state for kings.

Nonetheless, here I am, about to critique this poem--as a literary critic. Why? Mainly because I had to do that to counter a misreading of the poem that suggests Christopher Marlowe wrote it that a friend of mine (Completely disinterestedly, he swears) came up with at HLAS, where we debate who wrote the Shakespearean Oeuvre. Why waste my efforts against him, especially when I can't think of anything else to put in this entry?

Aside from that, I think my manner of interpretation might prove useful as a model to use in tackling more difficult poems. I hope also to get into the question of what I look for in judging the value of a poem. Anyway, here goes.

When I critique a poem, my goal is to produce as complete a pluraphrase of it as I can. A pluraphrase consists of a description of the poem's foreburden, or main meaning (which will usually be shorter than a paraphrase of the poem, for it will leave out secondary elements) and descriptions of all significant under-meanings involved, an identification of the poem's form, a summary of the poetic devices used in the poem indicating what they do and how well they do it, and an evaluation of the coherence and unity of the poem, and how well all its elements interact.

The foreburden of "Sonnet 29" couldn't be more simple or standard: it is a statement that no matter how lousy the poem's persona feels life is treating him, when he happens to think of his friend, his mood is reversed--to the maximum. I couldn't find any under-meanings. The form is a kind of double Spenserian, Shakespearean sonnet--that is, the poem has an actave and a sestet, but also a Shakespearean summing-up end-couplet. The form carries with it an appropriately antique/ traditional/ romantic/ intimate/ personal/ formal ambience As for poetic devices, all the conventional ones of the time are present: alliteration, assonance, consonance, rhyme, iambic pentameter, personification, simile, metaphor. . . . The rhymes are all proper except "least" for "-sessed," a minor flaw made up for by the inspired (or lucky) rhyme of "arising" with "despising"--because it so royally reverses the meaning of what it rhymes with.

What makes the sonnet is its simile (although the image of the persona's state singing hymns is a mite illogical--but one ignores that by misreading "state" as "I." The simile comes at just the right place in the narrative, and raises the mood to just short of maximal pleasure--"at heaven's gate." The couplet that follows is a cliche but beautifully and smoothly phrased, and carried by the beauty of the lark's singing, and the new day beginning (which, come to think of it, may be an undermeaning, albeit a brief one). A quiet withdrawel, which allows the lark-simile to blaze uncompeted against, so properly conventional.

There's little more to say. Shakespeare gives us a fairly thorough and clear picture of his persona's mood, then describes its cure. All is as coherent and unified as can be. I could say a little more about particularly choice uses of poetic devices, though, if I weren't so lazy. Perhaps, I will tomorrow.