words reveal his contradictory state of mind and echo
and emphasize the winter-spring binary in this and the
SONNET before it.
The object of affection is not revealed in Sonnet
98—or in the previous and following sonnets. Not
only is the gender of the beloved unclear, so is the pre-
cise nature of the relationship between the poet and his
loved one. Nevertheless, the repeated use of the word
you and its variations, including your, youth, and hue,
gives attention to and exposes the poet’s fascination
with the absent beloved. Written in past tense, this
sonnet perhaps indicates that the lovers are no longer
separated, or that he is passing judgment and assigning
guilt to the beloved, or the narrator could simply be
selfi sh and dramatic in the absence of love and lack of
time, two themes found in many of Shakespeare’s son-
nets. Sonnet 98 also relies on a number of obvious
erotic wordplays. The most obvious of the sexual refer-
ences in Sonnet 98 is the “lily” (l. 9) and the “rose” (l.
10), both expressions of female sexuality. A closer look
gives way to phallic reference as well: the ALLITERATION
of line 8’s “proud lap pluck.”
See also SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM; SHAKESPEARE’S SON-
NETS (OVERVIEW).
Kristen N. HeintzShakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnet 99 (“The for-
ward violet thus did I chide”) WILLIAM SHAKE-
SPEARE (1599) Sonnet 99 is one of a pair of sonnets
(with Sonnet 98) whose unexploited insinuations
about sexual love give it an unusual illusive dimension.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE sets out to answer two unspoken
questions about origins: How did certain plants get
their aromas? And how did certain plants get their
color? In the process, he takes full advantage of tradi-
tional Petrarchan CONCEITs. In the COUPLET, the poet
concludes that every fl ower he has seen has stolen odor
or color from his beloved.
This is a 15-line sonnet, the only one Shakespeare
wrote. Line 1 is introductory, resulting in a fi ve-line
fi rst “QUATRAIN” with an ababa rhyme scheme. Apart
from this anomaly, Sonnet 99 is a structurally normal
ENGLISH SONNET, although there is a turn after line 7 as
well as at the couplet. If the reader treats the fi rst fi ve
lines as a “quatrain,” this VOLTA indicates that there is
an inverted Italian logic at work here, providing a kind
of structural ambiguity echoing the many linguistic
ambiguities.
The fi rst line sets up an embedded speech, where the
speaker says he scolded the early (“forward”) violet.
Forward can also mean presumptuous; this ambiguity
provides the poet with the basic contrasts that play out
through the SONNET. In lines 2–5, the speaker addresses
the violet oxymoronically as “sweet thief” (l. 2). This is
a traditional CONCEIT, but on this occasion sweet does
not describe a mistress, and thief is not the hyperbolic
characterization of an attractive person. Violets are
fl owers, “sweet” by nature, and this one is being whim-
sically accused of a real theft—of stealing “that sweet
that smells” (l. 2) from the beloved’s breath. The rest of
the quatrain, and indeed, the eight-and-one-half lines,
shift from aroma to color. The violet, says the poet, gets
its color from the beloved’s complexion. As with for-
ward, purple (l. 3) has two connotations, red and violet,
so the violet is accused of stealing its rich purple from
the red blush of the beloved.
In the second quatrain, the speaker shifts so that the
rest of the sonnet addresses the beloved: When the
speaker says he “condemned” the lily “for thy hand” (l.
6), he is blaming this whitest of fl owers for stealing its
color from the beloved’s fairness. Similarly, the “marje-
rom” (marjoram) is accused of stealing its color from
the beloved’s hair, which thus would seem to be dark
auburn—or brown-haired. Alternatively, the marjoram
could be guilty of having taken the waviness of the
beloved’s hair; the ambiguity could be resolved only by
identifying the beloved.
Lines 8–12 detail the much more serious and thor-
oughgoing thefts perpetrated by the roses. These are
discovered standing fearfully on thorns (l. 8); the phrase
is proverbial, describing a person in a state of painful
anxiety. Roses also, of course, stand on the ends of their
thorny stems, and “thorns” also traditionally can replace
“rose bush” in a SYNECDOCHE. The poet personifi es the
colors of the fi rst two roses: One is “blushing shame,”
that is, bright red; the other “white despair” (l. 9). The
third rose is “nor red nor white” (l. 10), presumably
because it has passed its prime and its petals have fallen.
The poet exploits this state to indicate the fate of any384 SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS: SONNET 99