Sonnet 42

Sonnet 42: Rationalizing Rejection

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 42 is about a man, the speaker, who is contemplating the loss of his lover to his friend. The speaker is exploring the motive for his lover’s choice of betrayal; more notably he is attempting to explain why this betrayal has occurred with a series of different rationalizations. The speaker appears to believe that he will not be as pained by his loss if he were to rationalize why his lover betrayed him.

Shakespeare notoriously wrote three separate types of sonnets. The first set is Sonnets 1-126 which discuss a young man and often deal with the element of time. Sonnet 42 falls into the “young man” category and this character is present as the speaker’s friend.

The introduction to this English sonnet, the first quatrain, has the speaker explaining that he is not upset that his friend, the character of the young man, has his lover; rather he is upset that his lover has the young man. Lines 1 and 3 exemplify this, “That thou hast her, it is not all my grief,” “That she hath thee, is of my wailing chief.” This rationalization gives the impression that the speaker is not affected with the young man finding new love even though he is upset for his loss. However, this is not a convincing argument because the reader can observe in the same quatrain, line 4, when he further grieves his loss, “A loss in love that touches me more nearly.” Obviously the speaker’s feelings are not as he expresses in the first three lines because he closes the quatrain with another mention of how dear the lover’s love was to him.

The second quatrain of Sonnet 42 begins with the speaker’s second and most complex attempt to rationalize the situation as he pretends that he is not affected by the obvious rejection and betrayal of his lover. In both lines 7 and 8, the speaker says that this betrayal occurred for his benefit, “for my sake….” He gives the reason that the young man was only doing him a favor in seducing the women to test her and ended up being seduced himself. This rationalization has several flaws. First, the speaker shows a contradiction in line 5; the speaker calls his betrayers, “loving offenders” yet says he will excuse the sinners. This is a contradiction since he makes it a point to call them “offenders” while forgiving them in the same line.

Line 6 in the second quatrain is the thesis of the speaker’s second attempt to rationalize and shows yet another contradiction. The form of this line does not match with the rest of the sonnet in its iambic pentameter form. Shakespeare uses this particular form to set the line apart from the rest of the sonnet. The line’s emphasis is on the fact that the young man only desires the speaker’s lover because he knew the speaker loved her as well. This has a double meaning which may be why Shakespeare intended for it to stand out from the rest of the sonnet. First, the meaning could be just as it reads; this is most likely the true motivation the young man had to in seeking the lover in order to take her away from the speaker. Yet, the speaker attempts to excuse the young man’s behavior by giving a second meaning to the line saying in lines 7 and 8 that the betrayal was done for his own sake in order to test the lover’s faithfulness. This rationale is flawed here because in the event that the young man was merely attempting to test the lover for the speaker’s own sake, he would not have completely taken and then kept her for himself.

In the third and final quatrain there is a shift, it appears that the speaker’s thought are unlike his previous two when he says in line 9, “If I lose thee, my loss is my love’s gain.” Shakespeare uses alliteration of the consonant “L” in line 9 to further make the line and words used noticeable. The speaker is at this point changing his perspective toward rationalizing the issue. Now, the speaker is considering his friend, the young man, as the main loss in the betrayal. This contradicts what he says previously about losing the woman as his main “wailing” in line 3.

This shift continues as the speaker laments his loneliness due to the union of his betrayers. Again, the speaker says his rejection was done for his own well being in line 10, “And both for my sake lay on me this cross.” The speaker feels lonely and realizes that this rejection caused him to lose his friend and his lover. The third stanza has no attempt to rationalize what has occurred; instead, this quatrain reveals the speaker as depressed and finally admitting his loss of both friendship and love.

The final part of Sonnet 42 is a couplet with a half rhyme that marks another shift in the sonnet. As opposed to accepting and mourning his losses as seen in the third quatrain, the speaker attempts his final and most pathetic rationalization. The speaker is no longer directing his thoughts to either the young man or his lover. In the first line of the couplet, the speaker says that there is ultimately happiness in his rejection because he has a connection with his friend, “But here’s the joy: my friend and I are one.” There’s a Caesura after “joy” to note the emphasis being