fl ower presumptuous enough to have appropriated not
only the beloved’s color but also the fragrance (“to his
robb’ry had annex’d thy breath,” l. 11); it has been
eaten by “a vengeful canker” (l. 12), the cankerworm.
What makes this fate particularly gruesome for this rose
is that canker generally attacks buds, not full-blown
roses. The heinous crime has produced a shocking out-
come. Thus, the poet has built a crescendo up through
the levels of felony until he has reached the worst theft
and the only explicit punishment.
The couplet moves away from the destruction of the
thieves to praise the beloved by asserting that the
speaker found no fl ower “But sweet or color it had
stol’n from thee” (l. 14). Every fl ower in the garden
obtained either its aroma or its beautiful hue—or, as in
the case of the canker-infested rose, both—from the
beloved.
See also SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS (OVERVIEW).
Marjory E. Lange
Shakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnet 104 (“To me,
fair friend, you can never be old”) WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE (1599) Sonnet 104 is one of WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE’s SONNETS dedicated to his young male
friend, the LOVELY BOY. As in many of this sequence, the
idea of aging as a prod to reproduction is employed.
Shakespeare’s metaphor is that of the time and the sea-
sons, which come and go in a circular pattern, one
being born as another dies. The speaker begins by
declaring that his friend “never can be old” (l. 1) in his
eyes, because time stands still when he looks at his
friend. He undercuts this position by discussing how
much time has passed since they met—“three years” (l.
3)—how the cold of winter supplants the warmth of
spring, and how autumn—middle age—is come. How-
ever, he states once more, directly addressing the
friend, you have not changed at all. You have not been
touched by time—although if you look out the win-
dow, you can see all of nature is touched by time.
Shakespeare furthers the metaphor with “adial hand”
(a watch) with which the passing time is marked, with-
out seeing the motion of it. While the speaker’s friend
may seem to him unchanged by time, he has experi-
enced it himself. In the fi nal COUPLET, he brings his
premise and the extended metaphor to its logical con-
clusion: his friend hasn’t “bred.” Before his birth,
“beauty” was not born, so after his autumn will come
his winter, and he must engender a new “spring” before
that comes. In form, this is an ITALIAN (PETRARCHIAN)
SONNET.
See also SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS (OVERVIEW).
Leslie J. OrmandyShakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnet 105 (“Let not
my love be called idolatry”) WILLIAM SHAKE-
SPEARE (1599) Unlike the two SONNETs that surround
it, Sonnet 105 is not directly addressed to the young
male beloved. It is, however, about him, and the poet
walks a fi ne line between playful wit and outright sacri-
lege as he refutes the prior unspoken reproach that his
worshipping of the young male is idolatrous in a reli-
gious sense. The sonnet makes its case that to love one
god—in this case the youth—is not idolatry since in
fact loving and worshipping two or more is. The poet’s
religion, he goes on to say, is not very different from
Christianity: His praises are to one divine being who is
“ever so” (l. 4), the object of his worship is triune, being
fair, kind, and true (ll. 9, 10, 13), like the Christian
God. Critics have noted, however, that the rhetoric of
Christian allusion used in the sonnet convicts the poet
of the very sin he defends himself against.
Sonnet 105 hinges on the recognition that the accu-
sation of idolatry comes from a Christian who believes
the Trinity is comprised of three persons (Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit) in one eternal God. Line 4 (“To one, of
one, still such, and ever so”) echoes the Christian dox-
ology recited in church: “Glory be to the Father, and to
the Son, and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the begin-
ning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.
Amen.” The poet claims here that his beloved is also
triune, not unlike the God of his accuser, and he is “still
such, and ever so.” Similarly, the three-time repetition
of the words fair, kind, and true, in lines 9, 10, and 13,
reiterate the three-in-one theme, and the poet goes so
far as to claim that these qualities never “kept seat in
one” (l. 13) until they did so in his own beloved.
As the sonnet progresses, emphasis is increasingly
placed on the word one as it occurs in the last line ofSHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS: SONNET 105 385