Your love and pity doth the impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamp’d upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o’er-green my bad, my good allow?
You are my all the world, and I must strive
To know my shames and praises from your tongue;
None else to me, nor I to none alive,
That my steel’d sense or changes right or wrong.
In so profound abysm I throw all care
Of others’ voices, that my adder’s sense
To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense
You are so strongly in my purpose bred
That all the world besides methinks are dead. | ||
 | ||
Q1
Q2
Q3
C Your love and pity doth the impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamp’d upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o’er-green my bad, my good allow?
You are my all the world, and I must strive
To know my shames and praises from your tongue;
None else to me, nor I to none alive,
That my steel’d sense or changes right or wrong.
In so profound abysm I throw all care
Of others’ voices, that my adder’s sense
To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense
You are so strongly in my purpose bred
That all the world besides methinks are dead. | ||
Sonnet 112 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. It is noted for its compressed and obscure language.
Contents
Synopsis
The youth's sympathy is such that it conceals the badge of shame on the poet's brow. No-one else's opinion matters, since the youth covers the poet's misdeeds. The poet must learn to take the youth's estimate as the only one worthwhile. All other opinions are consigned to oblivion. His rejection of the rest of the world is so complete that the rest of the world may as well be dead.
The Final Couplet
The Q1609 text reads: 'You are so strongly in my purpose bred, / That all the world besides me thinkes y'are dead'. Malone's emendation, to read 'they are dead', is adopted by Kerrigan 'they're dead' (Penguin text, 1986); Ingram and Redpath read 'they are dead', with an elision marked between 'they' and 'are'; K Duncan Jones in the Arden edition (1997) reads 'me thinks you're dead', and Colin Burrow (New Oxford, 2002), 'me thinks y'are dead'. No scholarly consensus really emerges, but later editors seem to be opting for the 1609 text. Burrow's commentary remarks that 'This almost solipsistic reading of the couplet is contentious, though warranted by a poem in which the poet has sunk himself into a profound abysm of neglect of others' opinions'.
Structure
Sonnet 112 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form abab cdcd efef gg and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The 2nd line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:
× / × / × / × / × / Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow; (112.2) / = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus.The sonnet has a few instances of metrical variations. Lines 5, 12, and 13 have initial reversals, for example:
/ × × / × / × / × / Mark how with my neglect I do dispense: (112.12)And lines 6 and 8 potentially exhibit the rightward movement of an ictus (resulting in a four-position figure, × × / /, sometimes referred to as a minor ionic), for example:
The meter demands a few variant pronunciations: the 1st line contains the three-syllable contraction "th'impression" and line 9's "abysm" is two syllables. In line 11, "flatterer stopped" must be 4 syllables; while likely "flatt'rer stoppėd" is intended, it is just possible (if a bit more awkward) to use "flatterer stopt".