costly); military (like a cannon replete with too much
gunpowder); emotional (fearing that he has been
entrusted with too much responsibility in the relation-
ship). Burthen, now spelled burden, is similarly ambig-
uous, encompassing song (a REFRAIN), pregnancy (a
common Renaissance term for the fetus), and the
weight imposed by love’s power. The poet, like the
actor and the fi erce thing, is rendered speechless by a
combination of fear and overwhelming desire.
The third quatrain offers a solution to this speech-
lessness: The speaker pleads with the young man to
“let my books be then the eloquence, / And dumb
presagers of my speaking breast” (ll. 9–10), where
“books” may refer to theatrical playbooks, the books of
Shakespeare’s erotic poetry already in print (VENUS AND
ADONIS and The RAPE OF LUCRECE), any collection of
writings, or the book containing the sonnets them-
selves. The “dumb presagers”—with dumb meaning
silent, not stupid—may refer back to the unperfect
actor: Some Renaissance dramas were preceded by a
“dumb show,” a silent reenactment of the main action
of the play to help audience members follow a com-
plex plot, but a later sonnet, number 83, claims that
the young man’s beauty has caused the speaker to go
dumb, and that the young man has misinterpreted the
silence as the speaker’s “sin” (l. 9). In Sonnet 23, the
speaker explains that the “dumb presagers” “plead for
love, and look for recompense, / More than that tongue
that more hath more express’d” (ll. 11–12), telling the
young man that the books will say what the speaker,
terrifi ed or in the throes of passion, is unable to express.
As with o’ercharg’d, the word recompense has a com-
mercial application: The narrator may be expecting a
reward, fi nancial or physical, for the eloquent pleas in
his books.
The couplets that end Shakespeare’s sonnets often
change the meaning of what has gone before, or com-
plicate it in some way. Here, however, the couplet
intensifi es the emotion as the speaker begs, “O, learn
to read what silent love hath writ” (l. 13). Confessing
that his writings convey his love silently, perhaps
meaning secretly or privately, he then introduces a
paradox: “To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fi ne wit”
(l. 14). Love’s intensity allows one sense (sight) to do
the work of another (hearing); Shakespeare may here
refer to one of his early comedies, A Midsummer Night’s
Dream, in which a most unperfect actor, Bottom the
Weaver, awakens from what he thinks must have been
a dream about a transgressive love affair with the
Queen of Fairies and announces, “The eye of man hath
not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is
not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart
to report, what my dream was” (4.1.211–14). Bottom
and his friends then perform a play to celebrate the
three weddings that end Shakespeare’s comedy, and
their courtly audience, like the young man the sonnet’s
speaker addresses, must see beyond the halting and
imperfect performances to the profound narrative of
love and fi delity the company is trying to enact.
FURTHER READING
Cheney, Patrick. “ ‘O, Let My Books Be... Dumb Presagers’:
Poetry and Theater in Shakespeare’s Sonnets.” SQ 52, no. 2
(2001): 222–254.
Catherine LoomisShakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnet 29 (“When, in
disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes”) WIL-
LIAM SHAKESPEARE (1599) This SONNET begins with
the speaker wallowing in a pit of depression, disgraced
both in terms of fortune—he has had a lot of bad
luck—and in the world’s view of him. Consequently,
the speaker views himself as a weeping, lonely outcast
who prays to heaven constantly. But heaven is deaf and
never hears these useless cries. All that is left is to look
at his pitiful self and curse fate. We know the speaker
is very unhappy, but the fi rst quatrain does not tell us
of the cause of this upset.
The second quatrain gives us more detail. The
speaker wishes to be like someone who is more hope-
ful, has better prospects, someone who believes that
things will eventually work out well. He wishes to look
like someone else, presumably someone more good-
looking, and he wishes for friends like someone else—
either more friends or better ones. He also wishes for
the artistic abilities of someone else, though these abil-
ities could be in writing and not necessarily painting or
drawing. He wishes to have the scope, the range, or
generally grand abilities of some other person. The
speaker sums up this longing by indicating that he is368 SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS: SONNET 29