I am considering the commentary of Felix de Villiers: howw much responsibility do we have, as novice critiquers, to understand the context in which a piece of work exists? Given that you suggest we dismiss gossip and etc. regarding the author, should we not also dismiss contexts and critique the piece on its own merit?

Cheers,

Mitch
Mitchell Allen´s last blog ..Seven Hyper Links

I have made a tentative attempt at such interpretation in the topic Some Notes on Poetry in my group Poetry and Prose n my Facebook, which should be available to you

I don’t feel up to such an attenpt just now with this Sonnet, but here are some throwaway thoughts:

The sonnets belong in a cycle and it’s difficult to separate them, as you show when you make a comparison with “the marriage of true minds” in your second consideration. Many interpreters make a beeline for this last Sonnet, because it makes them feel morally comfortable. But it’s high principles are undermined by the sequence as a whole.

In the last couplet we know that the speaker is deluded in thinking his approaching death “will make thy love more strong,” since we know that his love throughout the Sonnets will remain unrequited.

Peter Ackroyd, in his Everyman’s History of English literature has an interesting interpretation of the Sonnets. He sees them as indicative of Shakespeare’s relationship to his dramatis personae. He is continually effacing, abasing himself because he gives life to his chracters at his own expense. To make them live he must renounce, even die. They will behave as they please in his despite.

I have quite often come across people who feel that the closing couplets, don’t live up to the rest of the Sonnets. Ackroyd agrees in seeing them as proverbial additions, but finds them moving for this very reason, because symbolic of the speaker’s self-effacement. I don’t think this is always true, but Sonnet 73 is a powerful poem if you read it up to the end of the third quatrain. Then a piece of proverbial wisdom is added.