Sonnet 28
How can I then return in happy plight
That am debarr’d the benefit of rest?
When day’s oppression is not eased by night,
And day by night, and night by day, oppress’d?
And each, though enemies to either’s reign,
Do in consent shake hands to torture me;
The one by toil, the other to complain
How far I toil, still farther off from thee.
I tell the day, to please them thou art bright
And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven;
So flatter I the swart-complexion’d night,
When sparkling stars twire not thou gild’st the even;
But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer,
And night doth nightly make grief’s length seem stronger.
Analysis
The poem takes the form of a dramatic monologue. It is delivered by a first-person speaker or narrator, and addressed to his lover. There are six instances of the first-person pronoun in the text, however, against three for the second-person, suggesting the text has more to say about the narrator than about his lover. The three direct references to the lover use the informal and intimate if archaic “thee / thou” form. The first use of this form – the first direct reference to the addressee – occurs as the end-word of the eighth line at the close of the octet, and has considerable impact both for its positioning and for its rhyme: “me / thee” is one of the central themes of the poem.
This delay of the second-person pronoun to line 8 reinforces the structure of the text, which falls naturally into two sections. The octet describes the speaker’s distress at the challenges of his life, both by day and by night. Syntactically, this section is dominated by the main clause (“How can I then return in happy plight …?”), which appears in the form of a rhetorical question. Three subordinate clauses follow: (1) when I can’t get any “rest”; (2) when night is no easier than day; (3) when taken together, night and day make life so hard. The speaker’s lover (to whom these complaints are addressed) emerges into the text only after this question and its subordinate clauses have been expressed.
The octet is therefore dominated by the opening question, which asks, in effect, “How can I be happy in these circumstances?” The three verbs that refine this question appear in the passive voice: the speaker is “debarred” from rest because the day’s challenges are “not eased” at night – rather day is “oppressed” and this is made worse by night and vice versa. These passive verbs reinforce the speaker’s sense of hopelessness at facing a situation over which he has little control: passive verbs confer impersonality. This effect is reinforced by the personification in line 6, in which night and day conspire and “shake hands” to “torture” the speaker.
At first, the poem has a conversational register. Indeed, it may seem to the reader that (s)he is intruding into a private conversation in medias res, implied by the logical “then” in line 1, raising the question of what has just been said. But any impression of informality is undermined by the fact that the opening question clearly has no answer, and is a rhetorical device rather than a genuine enquiry. Moreover the register of the lexical choices throughout the text confirms the impression of formality, with its sequence of Latinate or Romance lexemes: “return … debarred … benefit … oppression … enemy … consent … torture … complain…” and so forth. Around one in ten of the text’s lexemes are of Latinate etymology, an exceptionally high proportion.
The octet ends with “thee” and the sestet begins with “I”, reinforcing the point that the main subject of the text overall is the first person. In the third quatrain of the text, two complex sentences are presented, in which the subject (“I”) commands active verbs, a response perhaps to the passive mood of the opening quatrain: “I tell the day” is a conventional SVO structure, whereas “flatter I the … night” inverts the structure (VSO) for rhetorical effect. Both these sentences are complex, with main clauses and subordinate clauses, before the final couplet (lines 13 – 14) simplifies the syntax and presents the first compound sentence of the text, containing two main clauses with identical structures (SVOOc / SVOOc). The simplicity of the syntax, a contrast with what went before, adds to the impact of the closing couplet.
I suggested above that the sequence of passive verbs in the opening quatrain implies a loss of control for the speaker. This effect is reinforced by the adverbial subordinate clause of purpose in line 6, in which day and night “shake hands to torture me”. There seems to be a second ASCP in the next line (“to complain / How far I toil”), but not every infinitive is an ASCP, and the meaning here (of “to complain”) would seem to be “to convey” or “to observe”. Nonetheless, the speaker allows himself an ASCP of his own in line 9: “I tell the day to please him …”, the line begins, and indeed the italicised clause does certainly imply agency and ownership, a counterpoint to the speaker’s earlier passivity.
The two main verbs in the closing couplet’s two main clauses (“draw” / “make”) are copular, and so command complements. [1] These two object complements are comparative adjectives (“longer” / “stronger”), a reminder how versatile this structure can be. The two active verbs maintain clarity and simplicity, thus enhancing the impact of the closing couplet. The appearance of the archaic auxiliary verb (“doth”) in these two clauses is presumably designed to serve the purpose of the metre, though in each case it delays the main verb and gives it greater impact. Both main verbs, incidentally, are interrupted by contrasting adverbials of time (“daily / nightly”), which appear – somewhat surprisingly, in view of the subject matter – in the poem for the first time. Adverbials introduced earlier in the poem include manner (“in happy plight”) and place (“farther off from thee”).
From a phonological angle, the text has a number of striking features. Alliteration is used occasionally (“enemies to either’s reign”, “day doth daily draw”) though not perhaps as often as one might expect, given that sound-patterning is traditionally a property of this genre of text. There is also some evidence of assonance (“How far I toil, still farther off …”), though again its use is sporadic. Phonologically the main source of interest is the rhyme. The opening eight lines are accorded masculine rhymes, with their characteristic impact and punch. The poem’s first feminine rhyme (“heaven / even”) is a reminder of how far pronunciation has changed over the past four centuries. Which of these two lexemes has changed may perhaps be gauged by applying the test: how are they spelt / how are they pronounced? [2]
The second feminine rhyme (“longer / stronger”) provides the end-words for lines 13 and 14, closing the poem on an air of uncertainty with a couplet which may seek more conviction than it finds. Of the first thirty sonnets in Q, this is only the third to end on a feminine rhyme. [3]
Notes
[1] Copular verbs include is / are, seem, look, appear etc. They connect (Latin: copula = link) subjects with descriptions (you look happy, I am a Norwegian, George is out to lunch etc) which do not need to be adjectives. Object complements describe objects: Ron keeps the garden up to scratch, William makes his poems complicated.
[2] Spelling “correctly” or “accurately” is not a value in Shakespeare’s day. It becomes a value in the eighteenth century, when the English Language is codified and rules are laid down. Before then, words were spelt as they were pronounced. If “heaven / even” was ever a full rhyme, my money would be on heaven being pronounced /he:vɘn/ to rhyme with the familiar /e:vɘn/.
[3] The others are sonnets 20 (“pleasure / treasure”) and 26 (“love me / prove me”). /Q/ is the volume of Shakespeare’s Sonnets published in 1609, which is believed on balance to bear the poet’s imprimatur.
Glossary: 50 useful words and phrases
- active verb
- addressee
- adverbial of manner
- adverbial of place
- adverbial of time
- adverbial subordinate clause of purpose
- alliteration
- archaism
- assonance
- auxiliary verb
- comparative adjective
- complement
- complex sentence
- compound sentence
- conversational
- codification
- copular verb
- couplet
- dramatic monologue
- end-word
- etymology
- feminine rhyme
- first-person pronoun
- formality
- infinitive
- informality
- Latinate
- lexeme
- lexical choice
- main clause
- masculine rhyme
- narrator
- object complement
- octet
- passive voice
- personification
- phonology
- quatrain
- register
- rhetorical question
- rhyme
- rhyming couplet
- Romance
- second-person
- sonnet
- subordinate clauses
- syntax
- SVO / SVOOc
- text
- verb
