The Place 2 Be: Shakespeare's Sonnets

Critique of Sonnet 28

SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS

Theme: Absentee's Lament
Content: The author's fight against the oppressors: Day and Night

How can I then return in happy plight,
That am debarred the benefit of rest,
When day's oppression is not eased by night,
But day by night and night by day oppressed,

Although night is typically portrayed as ghastly in other sonnets, here, day is a partner in crime with night.

oppression is the key to the author's complaint and represented twice due to both Day's and Night's oppressive nature.

This quatrain has three masculine endings and one feminine ending in oppressed.

And each, though enemies to either's reign,
Do in consent shake hands to torture me,
The one by toil, the other to complain
How far I toil, still farther off from thee?

The 2 oppressors continue.

This quatrain has three masculine endings and one feminine ending in complain.

I tell the day to please him thou art bright,
And do'st him grace when clouds do blot the heaven;
So flatter I the swart-complexioned night
When sparkling stars twire not thou gild'st the even.

The author tries to placate the enemies Day and Night by showing how the subject's beauty aids them when the days are cloudy and the nights stars are dim.

This quatrain has two masculine endings and two feminine endings in heaven and even.

But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer,
And night doth nightly make grief's strength seem stronger.

This couplet has two feminine endings making the sonnet end with the feminine overpowering the previous preponderance of masculine endings. This may allude to night, what in this sonnet accentuates the poet's grief, traditionally being feminine. In Greek mythology Nyx was the goddess of night, hence the Latin word nox for night that was also feminine.