likely before the beloved since he is older. Addition-
ally, the speaker suggests that the beloved’s love will
grow stronger since she or he also is caught in the cycle
of time and will eventually die.
See also SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM; SHAKESPEARE’S SON-
NETS (OVERVIEW).
Theodora A. JankowskiShakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnet 74 (“But be con-
tented; when that fell arrest”) WILLIAM SHAKE-
SPEARE (1599) Sonnet 74 is one of several sonnets
in which the poet imagines dying before the young
man does, and he expresses his hope that both of them
will fi nd a kind of immortality through the sonnets
that document their relationship.
Sonnet 74 opens with a conjunction, But, perhaps
implying that the lines that follow are a continuation of
Sonnet 73’s closing couplet: “This thou perceiv’st,
which makes thy love more strong, / To love that well
which thou must leave ere long” (ll. 13–14). Sonnet 74
modifi es the romance of that COUPLET by giving the
young man a way out: “But be contented when that fell
arrest / Without all bail shall carry me away” (ll. 1–2)
the narrator commands, repeating the sentiment that
opens Sonnet 71 (“No longer mourn for me when I am
dead”), but doing so in legal language: Death will
“arrest” him, meaning it will stop him as well as con-
fi ne him, and there is no hope of bailing himself out of
the grave. The fi rst QUATRAIN ends on a more hopeful
note, however: “My life hath in this line some interest /
Which for memorial still with thee shall stay” (ll. 3–4),
a wonderfully ambiguous statement in which “this
line” can refer to the speaker’s poetry (as in the “eternal
lines” of Sonnet 18, l. 12) and where “interest” prom-
ises a return on the young man’s investment in the
relationship (as well as a reward for readers’ continu-
ing attention to the sonnets).
When the young man looks at the poems again and
reviews the lines, he is once again seeing “The very part
[that] was consecrate to thee” (l. 6), a line that com-
bines the sacred act of consecration with the profane
sexual connotation of part, a common slang term for
the genitals. The speaker’s body will, as the Book of
Common Prayer’s funeral service reminds the congrega-
tion, go to earth, but the corpse is the only thing the
earth is entitled to claim: “The earth can have but earth,
which is his due, / My spirit is thine, the better part of
me” (ll. 7–8). The word part now takes on an addi-
tional meaning: the speaker’s spirit or soul. This spirit
belongs to his beloved, and it fi nds expression in the
sonnets.
In the third quatrain, what the young man will lose
when the narrator dies is merely “the dregs of life” (l.
9), something to be discarded and forgotten. The
speaker’s body will become, in a common sentiment,
“The prey of worms” (l. 10) as it decays in the grave.
His corpse will be “The coward conquest of a wretch’s
knife” (l. 11) because the speaker is unable to fi ght
back, or because the wretch holding the knife—the
embalmer preparing the corpse for burial, or, Time
with his scythe—would not be brave enough to con-
front a living man with his weapon. The corpse, and
perhaps the speaker himself, will be “Too base” (l. 12)
to be remembered by the young man: The corpse is
“base,” or disgusting, because it is rots; the speaker is
“base” because, as he has claimed in other sonnets, he
is of a lower social status than the young man. The
speaker’s despairing realization that he will be “soon
ripe, soon rotten, and soon forgotten,” demonstrates
that the young man seems to have the upper hand in
the relationship.
As is often the case in Shakespeare’s sonnets, though,
the COUPLET changes everything. It appears to be a mere
platitude: “The worth of that is that which it contains”
(l. 13), a reminder that “it’s what’s inside that counts.”
More seriously, it reminds the young man that, while a
dead body is worthless, that which it was the vessel
for—a spirit, a soul, an intelligence, a poet, a lover—is
invaluable. The speaker concludes, “And that is this,
and this with thee remains” (l. 14). His spirit lives in
this poem, and the sonnet remains with the young
man, and with us, to bring the speaker, the young
man, and the relationship back to life each time the
poem is read. The poet ultimately triumphs over death
and, in his immortal declaration of his love and fi del-
ity, over the young man as well.
See also SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS (OVERVIEW).
Catherine Loomis376 SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS: SONNET 74