The first two stanzas of Sonnet 67 in the 1609 Quarto
Q1
Q2
Q3
C
Ah, wherefore with infection should he live
And with his presence grace impiety,
That sin by him advantage should achieve
And lace itself with his society?
Why should false painting imitate his cheek,
And steal dead seeing of his living hue?
Why should poor beauty indirectly seek
Roses of shadow, since his rose is true?
Why should he live, now Nature bankrupt is,
Beggar’d of blood to blush through lively veins?
For she hath no exchequer now but his,
And, proud of many, lives upon his gains. O, him she stores, to show what wealth she had In days long since, before these last so bad.
Sonnet 67 is one of
154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet
William Shakespeare. It's a member of the
Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man and is a thematic continuation of
Sonnet 66. In this poem, the speaker's anxiety about the social difference between him and his beloved takes the form of a criticism of courtly corruption. This sonnet was placed first in the pirated and mangled edition of 1640.
Structure
Sonnet 67 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 third line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:
× / × / × / × / × /
That sin by him advantage should achieve (67.3)
Line eight exemplifies an initial reversal, of which there are several in this sonnet:
/ × × / × / × / × /
Roses of shadow, since his rose is true? (67.8)
Source and analysis
Gary Schmidgall notes that the underlying conceit of the sonnet derives from
Petrarch, for whom hyperbolic praise is a main part of the stock in trade. For most critics, this theme is in this poem significant as it interacts with another theme, the corruption of the court. This theme, which was prominent in the voguish
satire of the 1590s. As he would in Hamlet, Shakespeare draws on the language of abuse derived ultimately from Roman satirists such as
Juvenal and
Horace. The combination of satiric and romantic language is commonly said to reinforce the speaker's ambivalence about his beloved.
M. M. Mahood notes the lexical uncertainty of line 1, which leaves open the possibility that the friend himself is infected. For this reason, Roger Warren points to a thematic similarity to All's Well That Ends Well, whose hero, Bertram, is similarly ambiguous.
"Lace" in line 4 has been glossed various ways. Citing Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth,
George Steevens glossed it as "embellish";
Edward Dowden agreed, but
George Wyndham has it as "diversify." Wyndham also perceives a reference to the "rival poet" in lines 7–8. In line 8, "seeing" is sometimes amended to "seeming" but more commonly "dead seeing" is glossed as some variation "lifeless appearance."