The Place 2 Be: Shakespeare's Sonnets

Critique of Sonnet 36

SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS

Theme: Separation
Content: The division of the author and subject as a pair into 2 separate and unrelated people.

Let me confess that we two must be twain
Although our undivided loves are one;
So shall those blots that do with me remain
Without thy help by me be borne alone.

A plethora of words that emphasise the oneness of the sonnet's two characters (author and subject) thread through the first 2 quatrains: two, twain, our; a possible pun on the French for one ("un") in undivided; undivided; one; alone.

love is identified as the issue of separation or coalescence of the two characters.

In our two loves there is but one respect,
Though in our lives a separable spite
Which, though it alter not love's sole effect,
Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight.

The two and one emphasis continues: our, two, one, our, sole and hours.

love increases its representation in this quatrain.

I may not evermore acknowledge thee
Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame,
Nor thou with public kindness honour me
Unless thou take that honour from thy name.

The two and one word usage now ceases except for a latent remnant in honour and a possible pun on the French for one ("un") in Unless: explicitly, the 2 characters are now identified only as thee and me with nothing bringing them together unless the subject resorts to the latent honour.

love is completely absent from this quatrain.

Possible reference to the author's and subject's names in Unless thou take that honour from thy name. The probable subject is Wriothesley and if the subject removes "me", i.e. the author's name, Wil, from his own "name" he is left with "rothesey". It is as though the author is saying in this sonnet that the two of them are "twain" by virtue of the fact that the author's first name is embedded in the subject's "name": Wriothesley. As if to confirm this, removing "Wil" from the subject's name leaves "rothesey" and in the following line these letters seem to be represented via "thee" and "sort". The author seems to be saying that if he and the subject are twain then there is harmony, balance and sense: they live together twain in the name Wriothesley. If Wil is "taken from thy name" then there is incompleteness and muddle.

But do not so. I love thee in such sort
As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report.

This couplet is identically repeated in Sonnet 96 and seems equally incongruous: after stating that he may never acknowledge the subject again he now says that the subject is his.

love returns in the couplet but solely from the author to the subject: the author declares his love for the subject in I love thee but there is no evidence of this being reciprocated.