embedded. It also incorporates a bit of weather-wise
folk wisdom: It was common to assert that a windy
night promised a calm day, or that the coming of rain
would calm blustering winds. In any event, the speaker
begs the beloved not to prolong his agony.
The third quatrain shows again the conditional
nature of the speaker’s preoccupation: “If thou wilt
leave me.. .” (l. 9). Here his concern is that he not be
abandoned by the young man “last,” after “petty griefs
have done their spite” (l. 10), because this would not
be a petty grief, but “the very worst” (l. 12). The COU-
PLET underscores the message: If you leave me, any
other disaster will not seem disastrous by comparison.
Sonnet 90 pays the young man quite a compliment
by yielding to him absolute infl uence over the speaker,
who does not portray himself in a very positive light.
Throughout this SONNET, the speaker’s uneasiness
remains unsupported by any facts. He offers no evi-
dence in this poem that there is a reason for the pro-
jected desertion; it seems to be all in his mind. His
only, and reiterated, concern is that, if the beloved
leaves him, it should be at a time when it will dwarf all
other disasters: “But in the onset come, so shall I taste /
At fi rst the very worst of fortune’s might” (ll. 11–12).
This second reference to “fortune” (also in l. 3) sug-
gests that the speaker is unaware of having done any-
thing to deserve his friend’s departure, but he fears it
anyway. This anxiety links Sonnet 90 thematically with
the sonnets around it.
See also SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM; SHAKESPEARE’S SON-
NETS (OVERVIEW).
Marjory E. LangeShakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnet 91 (“Some glor y
in their birth, some in their skill”) WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE (1599) Sonnet 91 is a classic ENGLISH
SONNET. In this poem, the speaker characterizes his
love of the aristocratic object of desire in terms of the
aristocratic pursuits and passions that the LOVELY BOY
would understand, and then intimates the possibility
of the young man rejecting him.
The SONNET begins with a direct appeal to the hier-
archical nature of society, underscoring the difference
in positions that the speaker and his object of desire
occupy. “Some glory in their birth” (l. 1) is at once a
direct appeal to the young man of the sonnets, who
does “glory” in his birth at a higher status in society
than the speaking voice of the sonnets, and it is also,
more generally, a description of the hierarchical system
of which both are a part. The fi rst QUATRAIN is a list of
aristocratic and courtly pursuits and interests. Court-
iers were expected to be, of course, wealthy (l. 2) and
well-dressed (l. 3), but they were also expected to have
some skills in equitation, falconry, and hunting (l. 4).
Indeed, the sonnet’s speaker even comments on the
perennial subject of the English court’s interest in new
French and Italian fashions in line 3 “though newfan-
gled ill.”
The second quatrain acts as a pivot for the sonnet,
allowing the third quatrain to return to the ground
covered by the fi rst with a different approach. The sec-
ond quatrain is even divided easily into two grammati-
cal units. The fi rst unit is the sentence that grammatically
completes list of dependent clauses of the fi rst qua-
train. This unit, lines 5–6, draws on the theory of the
FOUR HUMORS, a theory of medicine, psychology, and
physics whereby each individual thing or person is
attracted to, or repelled by, another thing or person
based on its humor (predominant bodily fl uid). A
phlegmatic person, by this theory, would not be drawn
to falconry, because the primary element of the phleg-
matic person is water. Thus, according to the theory of
the humors, “every humour hath his adjunct pleasure”
(l. 5) is quite literally true, as certain types of people
will be drawn to certain types of activities and social
alliances. The second unit of the second quatrain
begins the turn back to the beginning of the poem by
stating that the sonnet’s speaker fi nds “one general
best” (l. 8)—that is, the young man, who is better than
“these particulars” (l. 7).
The third quatrain revisits the same list that the fi rst
quatrain did, but prefaces it with “Thy love is better
than.. .” (l. 8), inverting the stratifi ed system that the
fi rst quatrain points to and placing the young man at
the apex of a new hierarchy of desire. Wealth, fashion,
and the gentlemanly pursuits stand in a pale shadow to
the love that the speaker has for the young man. The
fi nal line of the third quatrain even goes so far as to
upset the humorial theory that the second quatrain380 SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS: SONNET 91