Sonnet 79

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The first two stanzas of Sonnet 79 in the 1609 Quarto
Q1 Q2 Q3 C Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid, My verse alone had all thy gentle grace; But now my gracious numbers are decay’d, And my sick Muse doth give another place. I grant, sweet love, thy lovely argument Deserves the travail of a worthier pen; Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent He robs thee of, and pays it thee again. He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word From thy behavior; beauty doth he give, And found it in thy cheek: he can afford No praise to thee but what in thee doth live. Then thank him not for that which he doth say, Since what he owes thee thou thyself dost pay. 4 8 12 14 —William Shakespeare[1]

Sonnet 79 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is part of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man, and the second sonnet of the Rival Poet subsequence.

Synopsis

When the poet wrote of the youth, his verse partook of his the youth's charms. But now his poetry has weakened another poet has taken his place. This poet takes the beauties and virtues of his verse from the youth and returns them to him in the form of poetry. Therefore the youth owes him no thanks for his verse, since he has given it its merits.

Structure

Sonnet 79 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:

 ×  /    × /    ×  /     ×  /  ×    / 
My verse alone had all thy gentle grace; (79.2)

/ = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus.

The sonnet is metrically quite regular; however, the 4th line may be scanned with a rightward movement of the first ictus (the resulting four-position figure, × × / /, is sometimes referred to as a minor ionic):

×    ×  /    /    ×    /   ×  /  ×    / 
And my sick Muse doth give an other place. (79.4)

The meter demands a 2-syllable pronunciation of "worthier" in the 6th line.^[2]

Notes

1. Pooler, C[harles] Knox, ed. (1918). The Works of Shakespeare: Sonnets. The Arden Shakespeare [1st series]. London: Methuen & Company. OCLC 4770201.
2. Booth 2000, p. 273.

References

First edition and facsimile

• Shakespeare, William (1609). Shake-speares Sonnets: Never Before Imprinted. London: Thomas Thorpe.
• Shakespeare, William; Lee, Sidney (1905). Shakespeares Sonnets: Being a reproduction in facsimile of the first edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. OCLC 458829162.

Variorum editions

• Alden, Raymond Macdonald (1916). The Sonnets of Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. OCLC 234756.
• Rollins, Hyder Edward (1944). A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: The Sonnets [2 Volumes]. Philadelphia: Lippincott. OCLC 6028485.

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.