Marjoram Sweet
Marjoram Sweet
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Shakespeares Sonnet 99?
I do not understand the context of the sonnet. Anyone a Sonnet Expert?
1. The forward violet thus did I chide:
2. Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,
3. If not from my love's breath? The purple pride
4. Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
5. In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd.
6. The lily I condemned for thy hand,
7. And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair;
8. The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
9. One blushing shame, another white despair;
10. A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both,
11. And to his robbery had annexed thy breath;
12. But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth
13. A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
14. More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
15. But sweet, or colour it had stol'n from thee.
He's reversing the classic Petrarchan conceit which finds qualities of the beloved in nature. Petrarch uses simile--your hair is like coal, your lips like rubies, etc. to show that the beloved resembles (or perhaps imitates) the most beautiful things in nature. Shakespeare's conceit here is that nature has actually taken these things from the beloved, leaving the beloved as the mark of beauty to which things in nature must be compared. Nature is only beautiful because it contains reminders of the beloved.
Focus on the closing couplet for a better sense of the overall meaning. Is he really saying that nature has stolen from his beloved, or is it more that his being in love has changed how he views the world?
