Sonnet 35 - Further Analysis

Further Analysis

In Sonnet 35, one of the most apparent points that critics have addressed is the duality of the poem’s tone. The first quatrain describes what at first appears to be praise and is followed by the second quatrain, in which the speaker addresses a lover’s sin and the corruption of himself as a result. Stephen Booth draws attention to the discrepancies between the first and second quatrains and remedies this discrepancy by explaining the speaker’s true purpose in the first quatrain. He says, “This sonnet is a variation of Shakespeare’s habits of damning with fulsome praise and of making flattering accusations.” The speaker lists sarcastic praises, which are supposed to be read as if the speaker was recalling these excuses he made for his sinful lover with contempt. Quatrain 2 creates “a competition in guilt between the speaker and the beloved.” The competition grows with the speaker’s attempt to justify his sin of becoming the accomplice by degrading the beloved. This leads to an escalation in quatrain 3, where the speaker declares his inner turmoil. He says, “Such civil war is in my love and hate." This conflict within the speaker leads to the couplet, which according to Booth declares the “beloved diminished under a new guilt of being the beneficiary of the speaker’s ostentatious sacrifice." In summation, Booth’s reaction to Sonnet 35 is that “the facts the poem reports should make the speaker seem admirable in a reader’s eyes; the speaker’s manner, however, gives conviction to the idea that he is worthy of the contempt he says he deserves."

Contrary to Booth’s take on the duality of Sonnet 35, Helen Vendler claims the dedoublement is most visible “in the violent departure from in quatrain 1 in the knotted language of quatrain 2." Instead of describing the speaker as divided over love and hate, she says that the speaker in quatrain 1 is “misguided, and even corrupt, according to the speaker of quatrain 2." She also disagrees with Booth’s reading of the couplet. Rather, she related the contrasting voices in the first and second quatrain to a philosophical metaphor for the self. “I have corrupted myself is a statement that presupposes a true “higher self which has, by a lower self, been corrupted, and which should once again take control. Even the metaphor of the lawsuits implies that one side in each suit is ‘lawful’ and should win."

Vendler brings up another point of criticism, which is the confessional aspect of Sonnet 35. Shakespeare uses the vocabulary of legal confession. In an essay by Katherine Craik she discusses the connection between this sonnet and the early criminal confession. Craik says, “the speaker testifies against the unspecified ‘trespass’ of a ‘sweet thief,’ but simultaneously confesses to playing ‘accessory’ to the robbery." The speaker also excuses the beloved’s sin, which brought about his “wrongful self-incrimination” in the sonnet. She concludes, “Fault can be transferred in the act of confessing, and judgments are clouded rather than clarified." Her conclusion aligns with Booth’s claim that the speaker is an unlikeable one. It also aligns with Vendler’s point that either the speaker or the beloved must be wrong. Craik’s essay draws the conclusion that the speaker is actually at greater fault than the beloved.