Sonnet 112

Sonnet 112
Detail of old-spelling text.
Sonnet 112 in the 1609 Quarto

Q1



Q2



Q3



C

Your love and pity doth the impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamp’d upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o’er-green my bad, my good allow?
You are my all the world, and I must strive
To know my shames and praises from your tongue;
None else to me, nor I to none alive,
That my steel’d sense or changes right or wrong.
In so profound abysm I throw all care
Of others’ voices, that my adder’s sense
To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:
You are so strongly in my purpose bred
That all the world besides methinks are dead.




4



8



12

14

—William Shakespeare[1]

Sonnet 112 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. It is noted for its compressed and obscure language.

Synopsis

The youth's sympathy is such that it conceals the badge of shame on the poet's brow. No-one else's opinion matters, since the youth covers the poet's misdeeds. The poet must learn to take the youth's estimate as the only one worthwhile. All other opinions are consigned to oblivion. His rejection of the rest of the world is so complete that the rest of the world may as well be dead.

Structure

Sonnet 112 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form abab cdcd efef gg and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The 2nd line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:

  ×    /  ×    /  ×    /     × /   ×   / 
Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow; (112.2)
/ = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus.

The sonnet has a few instances of metrical variations. Lines 5, 12, and 13 have initial reversals, for example:

 /    ×   ×    /  ×  /   ×  /  ×  / 
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense: (112.12)

And lines 6 and 8 potentially exhibit the rightward movement of an ictus (resulting in a four-position figure, × × / /, sometimes referred to as a minor ionic), for example:

  ×   ×   /      /    ×    /  ×   /    ×    / 
That my steeled sense or changes right or wrong. (112.8)

The meter demands a few variant pronunciations: the 1st line contains the three-syllable contraction "th'impression" and line 9's "abysm" is two syllables.[2] In line 11, "flatterer stopped" must be 4 syllables; while likely "flatt'rer stoppėd" is intended,[3] it is just possible (if a bit more awkward) to use "flatterer stopt".

Notes

  1. ↑ Pooler, C[harles] Knox, ed. (1918). The Works of Shakespeare: Sonnets. The Arden Shakespeare [1st series]. London: Methuen & Company. OCLC 4770201.
  2. ↑ Kerrigan 1995, pp. 132, 327.
  3. ↑ Kerrigan 1995, pp. 327.

References

First edition and facsimile
Variorum editions
Modern critical editions
  • Atkins, Carl D. (2007). Shakespeare's Sonnets: With Three Hundred Years of Commentary. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN 978-0-8386-4163-7. OCLC 86090499. 
  • Booth, Stephen (2000) [1st ed. 1977]. Shakespeare's Sonnets (Rev. ed.). New Haven: Yale Nota Bene [Yale University Press]. ISBN 0-300-01959-9. OCLC 2968040. 
  • Burrow, Colin (2002). The Complete Sonnets and Poems. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0192819338. OCLC 48532938. 
  • Duncan-Jones, Katherine (2010) [1st ed. 1997]. Shakespeare's Sonnets. The Arden Shakespeare Third Series (Rev. ed.). London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-4080-1797-5. OCLC 755065951. 
  • Evans, G. Blakemore (1996). The Sonnets. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521294034. OCLC 32272082. 
  • Kerrigan, John (1995) [1st ed. 1986]. The Sonnets ; and, A Lover's Complaint. New Penguin Shakespeare (Rev. ed.). Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-070732-8. OCLC 15018446. 
  • Mowat, Barbara A.; Werstine, Paul (2006). Shakespeare's Sonnets & Poems. Folger Shakespeare Library. New York: Washington Square Press. ISBN 978-0743273282. OCLC 64594469.  online text
  • Orgel, Stephen (2001). The Sonnets. The Pelican Shakespeare (Rev. ed.). New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0140714531. OCLC 46683809. 
  • Vendler, Helen (1997). The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-63712-7. OCLC 36806589. 
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