Shakespeare's Sonnet 83

This week, my group and I are examining one of Shakespeare’s sonnets earlier sonnets, which is within the set of sonnets that Shakespeare wrote towards a mysterious and anonymous rival poet who also directed his sonnets to an unidentified young man. Our group chose Sonnet 83, which is quite an honest and direct expression of the speaker’s thoughts and feelings towards “you,” which we can assume to be the nameless opponent poet. It is without hesitation that this sonnet contains four quatrains and one couplet, and that the rhyme scheme follows the pattern ABABCDCDEFEFGG, which is expected of Shakespeare because it is his signature way of writing. Moreover, Shakespeare uses paint as a medium to depict the inexplicable beauty of the young man. In the sonnet’s first quatrain, the speaker seems to be flattering the young man by admitting that the young man’s significance cannot be fathomed or articulated into words, because his worth is much more than any poet could attempt to convey. The speaker expresses this notion by saying that “you did exceed / The barren tender of a poet’s debt” (3-4), which is a direct statement to the young man, whom the speaker seems to be quite fond of. In the second quatrain, the speaker reveals his profound admiration for this young lad when he confesses to intentionally worsening his writing in hopes that “a modern quill doth come too short” (7), so that the young man can prove himself more worthy than the poet’s incompetent and inadequate writing. Thus, the speaker’s progression in thought is evident when he becomes distracted by the youthful man’s worth that “in [him] doth grow” (8). In the third quatrain, the speaker shifts his train of thought as an acknowledgment of his silence, which despite the young man’s disapproval, the speaker finds it to be “most [his] glory, being dumb” (10), if it means that his ignorance will preserve the young man’s charm. Although the youth has objected to the poet’s silence, the poet is still adamant that he would rather “impair not beauty [by] being mute” (11), unlike the rival poet, who “would give life and bring a tomb” (12). In the last lines of the third quatrain, the speaker finally mentions the rival poet, which the speaker scorns and subtly condemns for spoiling the youth’s beauty by shamelessly writing about him. In this blunt statement, the poet is harshly contrasting his superior writing, to the rhetorical writing of his rival, who is (according to the poet), ruining the young man’s loveliness. There are some hints of jealousy or competition between the two poets in this line, which underlines the tension that exists between the two poets. This is further extended in the couplet, when the speaker’s sentiments change again as he declares that there is “more life in one of your fair eyes / Than both your poets can in praise devise” (13-14). In this final pair of lines, the speaker concludes that no poet, no matter how skilled or talented, can even come close to capturing the true beauty of the young man, because it is much greater than what any two poets could ever express.