straw” upon her head which confi rms the PASTORAL set-
ting. Using agrarian language, the narrator observes that
while her beauty at fi rst appears to be “spent and done,”
a closer inspection reveals that “[t]ime had not scythed
all that youth begun” (l. 12). She cries into a handker-
chief that has “conceited characters”—i.e., letters or
images—embroidered upon it in silk. Her eyes shift
their gaze from earth to sky, signaling her emotional dis-
tress by showing her “mind and sight” to be “distract-
edly commix’d” (l. 28). Her “slackly braided” hair falls
out from her straw hat and hangs next to her “pale and
pined cheek.” One by one she removes “favors” from a
basket—tearing letters (“folded schedules”) and crack-
ing rings before throwing them into the water along
with her tears. Enraged, she curses the “false blood” with
which some of the missives were written.
The ninth stanza introduces another character to
this scene—a former courtier and now aged and “rev-
erend man”—who also spots the maid and offers to
listen to her tale to help “assuage” her “suffering
ecstasy” (l. 69). In response to him, the girl assumes
the role of narrator, and in stanzas 11–22 she describes
the handsome looks and appealing nature of the
seducer to whom she gave “all [her] fl ower” (l. 147).
She details the “browny locks” of his curly hair and the
“phoenix down” on his young face; his free-spirited
demeanor and expert horsemanship; and, most cru-
cially, the persuasive force of his “subduing tongue” (l.
120). He is so alluring, in fact, that he manages to
enchant all types of people and bend them to his will,
including a number of young women who have sur-
rendered themselves to him. Thus, the narrator initially
chooses to distance herself from him.
Nonetheless, the maid’s passion and curiosity quickly
prevail over her good judgment (stanzas 23–25), and
when he “besiege[s]” her “city,” she gives the young
man an audience. His becomes the new narrative voice
here as the cad declares his devotion for the maid and
pleads his case to her. Skillfully he hinges his argument
on honest admissions of his own charisma and irresist-
ibility. Women, he claims, have given their hearts and
bodies to him freely, and so they bear the responsibil-
ity for their own, and indeed for his, actions. Having
been given a multitude of “fair gems enrich’d” and
“deep-brain’d SONNETs” (which symbolize more carnal
and emotional female treasures), he will now unself-
ishly yield this entire fortune to the maid—as an obe-
dient “minister” does to a deity (l. 229).
The young man’s adoption of religious rhetoric at this
point facilitates his segue into a story about a nun—a
“sister sanctifi ed, of holiest note” (l. 233)—whom he
managed to “subdue” and to seduce out of her chosen
seclusion, but whom he admires as a “valiant” woman
among the “broken bosoms” that belong to him. The
young man’s narration ends there, and the maid resumes
speaking. She explains to the old man that her “reason”
was ultimately “poisoned” by the young man’s show of
tears and ornate speech, and that she was moved to tears
herself—those which served only to “restore” him (l.
301). In the fi nal stanzas, the maid laments her undoing
at the hands of this artful scoundrel who “preach’d pure
maid” to her (l. 315), but sorrowfully admits that she
would probably be “new pervert[ed]” by him if he ever
came around again (l. 329).
With its male-authored, female-voiced paradigm, A
Lover’s Complaint represents in its own right a popular
and sophisticated variation on the early modern COM-
PLAINT. Presenting something of a straightforward stor-
yline, A Lover’s Complaint rather defi es multifarious
interpretations of its meaning and structure. Conse-
quently, critical approaches toward the poem itself
tend to focus on linking and comparing it to other
Shakespearean works, to other works of the same
genre, and to the rhetorical and confessional literary
and cultural trends of the period. Primarily, the ques-
tion of authorship remains central to the small body of
criticism on this poem. Scholars who argue in favor of
Shakespeare having penned A Lover’s Complaint call for
the need to read the poem as a direct response and a
literary complement to his sonnets—which on the
whole refl ect its themes of nature and sexual desire
and of idolatrous love and agonizing loss, and most of
which describe the poet’s affection for a young gentle-
man of great beauty and high social rank. It was, after
all, not uncommon in the period for longer poems,
and specifi cally complaints, to accompany groups of
sonnets. Conversely, scholars who doubt Shakespeare’s
authorship of this poem often cite as proof its presen-
tation of too many words rarely used or not found at
all in other Shakespearean works. Moreover, they252 LOVER’S COMPLAINT, A