Sonnet 40


's Sonnet 40 is one of the sequence addressed to a well-born, handsome young man to whom the speaker is devoted. In this poem, as in the others in this part of the sequence, the speaker expresses resentment of his beloved's power over him.

Paraphrase

Go and take all of my loves, my beloved—how would doing so enrich you? It would not give you anything you do not already have. All that I possessed was already yours before you took this. If, instead of loving me, you love the person I love, I can't blame you, because you are merely taking advantage of my love.. Yet I forgive you, even though you steal the little that I have, and even though it is well known that an injury inflicted by a supposed lover is far worse than an insult from an enemy. Oh lustful grace, in whom everything bad is made to look good, even if you kill me with these wrongs against me, I will not be your enemy.

Structure

Sonnet 40 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet, composed of three quatrains followed by a final couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the English sonnet, ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. It is written in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. Line four exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:

× / × / × / × / × / 
All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more.

All four lines in the second quatrain have a final extrametrical syllable or feminine ending:

 × / × / × / × / × / 
But yet be blam'd, if thou thy self deceivest

In prose, which syllables receive emphasis within a string of monosyllables can be very open. The following two lines are mis-scanned by reversing every ictus/nonictus :

 / × / × / × / × × /
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
 / × / × / × / × / ×
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;

Although a little awkward, these emphases yield an acceptable prose sense; yet we can be quite sure they were not intended by Shakespeare. The following more likely scansion shows how Shakespeare works with meter to convey meaning:

 × / × / / × × / × /
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
 × / × / × / × / × / 
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;