Sonnet 134 | |||||||
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Sonnet 134 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English poet and playwright William Shakespeare. In it, the speaker confronts the Dark Lady after learning that she has seduced the Fair Youth.
In the first quatrain, the speaker confesses that both he and the friend are at the mistress's mercy; in the second one, he surmises that the attachment will hold, due to the friend's naivete and the mistress's greed.
The remainder of the poem construes the mistress as an unethical moneylender: metaphorically, she lent her beauty to the speaker and then collected the friend as interest.
Sonnet 134 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 1st line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:
× / × / × / × / × / So, now I have confess'd that he is thine (134.1)
Line 8 begins with a common metrical variation, the initial reversal:
/ × × / × / × / × / Under that bond that him as fast doth bind. (134.8)
A potential initial reversal occurs in line 4. Line 13 contains both an initial reversal and a potential mid-line reversal.
In line 7 the meter demands the two-syllable Elizabethan pronunciation of "surety". [2]
Sonnet 51 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. It is a continuation of the argument from Sonnet 50.
Sonnet 62 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, addressed to the young man with whom Shakespeare shares an intimate but tormented connection. This sonnet brings together a number of themes that run through the cycle: the speaker's awareness of social and other differences between him and the beloved; the power and limitations of poetic art; and the puzzling sense in which love erases the boundaries between individuals.
Sonnet 100 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.
Sonnet 98 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 persona expresses his love towards a young man. It is the second of a group of three sonnets to treat a separation of the speaker from his beloved.
In Shakespeare's Sonnet 135, the speaker appeals to his mistress after having been rejected by her.
Sonnet 152 is a sonnet by William Shakespeare. It is one of a collection of 154 sonnets, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality, first published in a 1609.
Sonnet 150 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is considered a Dark Lady sonnet, as are all from 127 to 152. Nonetheless 150 is an outlier, and in some ways appears to belong more to the Fair Youth.
Sonnet 149 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare.
Sonnet 148 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare.
Sonnet 142 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare.
Sonnet 143 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare.
Sonnet 140 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. Sonnet 140 is one of the Dark Lady sonnets, in which the poet writes to a mysterious woman who rivals the Fair Youth for the poet's affection.
Sonnet 139 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare.
Sonnet 137 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare.
Sonnet 75 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.
Sonnet 119 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.
Sonnet 90 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.
Sonnet 103 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.
Sonnet 114 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.
Shakespeare's sonnet 117 was first published in 1609. It uses similar imagery to Sonnet 116 and expands on the challenge in the closing couplet. Using legally resonant metaphors, the poet defends himself against accusations of ingratitude and infidelity by saying that he was merely testing the constancy of those same things in his friend.