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Critique of Sonnet 66

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SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS

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Theme:      Weary of Injustice
Content:    A magnificent sonnet reflecting on the injustices in the world that the author has grown weary of. A specious sonnet because it looks simple and monotonous on the surface yet it is redolent of Sonnet 91 in the way the author lists and detaches himself from the things that drive him to despair.

• The author is weary of life. He's tired of the injustices he sees, the slings and arrows, of all these.
• And he cannot fix these things, which augments his despair. He's helpless. He has no personal control over them. They're things he is powerless to ameliorate.

• Desert here means "virtue", something that is "deserved". But it's portrayed as a beggar born. There's no social justice because honest virtue, that which is deserved, is born a beggar. It is lowly, something looked down upon, something that isn't honoured for what it is. Good, honest virtuous desert has a hard life from the start.
• Behold demonstrates that the following list of things are those that he sees/beholds.
• The alliteration of behold and beggar born binds the victim to the injustice.

• The first of the Injustices: Social injustice.
• Someone who is a needy nothing has jolly trimmings as well. Fine clothes, looking and feeling very pleased with himself. The same type of clothes horse as in Sonnet 91 with "their garments (though new-fangled ill)". The person who is a needy nothing has literally got all the trimmings too.
• The alliteration of needy nothing emphasises the focus on the injustice.

• The second of the Injustices: Religious injustice.
• Faith is renounced and disavowed.
• The alliteration of faith with forsworn again binds the victim to the injustice.

• Social injustice again: gilded honour like the trimmings of the needy nothing has-it-all. Like gilding the lily, those with honour can't get enough and gild what should already be enough.
• This is shamefully misplaced by those who claim to have honour. In a fair world things would be correctly placed but in the world Shakespeare is tiring of they're shamefully misplaced. The undeserving have and the virtuous have not.

• And again injustice. The virtuous maiden has been prostituted. Ugliness perverts beauty.
• This is another despairing characteristic of moral injustice that the great observer, Shakespeare, sees in the world that he lives and he is tiring of.

• More moral injustice. Good, true, righteous people (like the maiden) are wrongly disgraced.

• The important word here is sway. Sway, as used extensively in poetry, means "power", "governing authority", "state power". Here, it is limping sway: corrupt government, or at least corrupt authority. Strength is disabled by this debilitating, corrupt authority. Something that should be able is instead disabled.
• Political injustice that the author looks upon with despair and without the position, authority or means to set it right.

• Now it's getting personal. Art, something of profound interest to our hero is tongue-tied.
• This theme is repeated in other sonnets: "me tongue-tied" (80); "My tongue-tied muse" (85); "My tongue-tied patience" (140). The only person in Shakespeare's world who ever gets tongue-tied is himself.
• He is frustrated by his own art being tongue-tied by authority. Possibly a protest to the changes required by the Master of the Revels for any contentious matters in his works such as supporting Essex and the changes required to the play Sir Thomas More.
• A personal example of corrupt authority disabling strength and interfering with his own work: artistic injustice.

• Foolishness, with artificial clinical precision, controlling skill. The lunatics have taken over the asylum. The fools are in control. The skilled are being emasculated. More social injustice.

• Simple, plain, honest truth is disparagingly called simplicity.

• Utterly brilliant line this. Extraordinary how he can convey so much lyric beauty with just 6 words.
• The Goody vs. The Baddy. Goodness is trapped, made captive by ill (evil/vile/etc.) that is not only despicable in its own right but is a captain, a person of authority. Not a King or Queen, just a captain, someone who can get high enough to exercise authority and abuse it before he's found out.
• Captive good could well be perceived to be the decent author and Captain ill a person of higher social position yet of little or no worth. More social injustice.

• The Injustice Sandwich. Line 1 starts with Tired with all these and the couplet starts with Tired with all these and there's been plenty of beef provided in the middle.

• Good old Shakespeare. Back to what is his measure. What matters most to him. Not gilded honour with trimmings. Not some needy nothing. But a man of simple truth. A man who doesn't suffer fools gladly whatever gilded honour they ponce about with. A captive good. A man who values honesty, beauty and most of all his love who keeps him going despite all the corruption and injustices he observes in the world. And a love who he couldn't possibly contemplate leaving alone at the mercy of all this ugliness.
• The imagery in this sonnet is so rich. It's not really a sonnet. It's a playlet.