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Sonnet 29 (WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE)

Sonnet 29 (WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE)

Sonnet 29

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,—and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

 

 

William Shakespeare

 

 

Comment:

Sonnet 29, written around 1592, finds William Shakespeare, then in his late 20s, in a highly melancholic state. He is worried about failure. It is a paradox that the most acclaimed writer in English literature should have worried so acutely about being a loser. Then again, ‘greatness’ in literature doesn’t come from living pompously among high flown abstractions; great writers are ultimately simply those who know how to speak with special honesty about the panic and sadness of an ordinary life.

What had brought Shakespeare to this anxious vigilant state? Partly he had a famous and very vicious enemy, a fellow playwright called Robert Greene, who was spreading rumours about him and seemed determined to bring him down. Furthermore, there was a bad plague on: 20,000 people had died and the government had shut down all pubs and theatres for six months. Every actor and playwright was out of work.

How to bear the terror of failure? With Shakespeare as our guide, though the impulse may be to turn away from fear, what can calm us down is to sit with what scares us most. Shakespeare openly meditates on what might happen: he pictures the worst that could unfold in order to see how it might be borne. Also, he will try to universalise what could otherwise feel like only a very personal and embarrassing affliction – and hold out an imaginary hand of friendship to all his readers, as writers will.

Then comes the core of the consoling move. We don’t actually ever need the whole of society to love us. Let the Robert Greenes of this world – and their many successors in newspapers and social media down the ages – say their very worst and nastiest things and be done with them. All that one needs is the love of a few friends or even just one special person – and one can survive.

The cleverest and most humane writer who ever lived was sure of it; and in our panic, we should trust him.

 

-ALAIN DE BOTTON

 

Image: https://gr.pinterest.com/pin/540291286550079689/?nic_v1=1afZqVmi7EHByW2en6uMi7JFdSR4ge5Wd2c3cLj8OCZwnCmuM7fq%2BatZfd%2FvwQfLVE

 

 



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