Sonnet 34

« » Sonnet 34
Sonnet 34 in the 1609 Quarto
Q1 Q2 Q3 C Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day, And make me travel forth without my cloak, To let base clouds o’ertake me in my way, Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke? ’Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break, To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face, For no man well of such a salve can speak That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace: Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief; Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss: The offender’s sorrow lends but weak relief To him that bears the strong offence’s cross. Ah, but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds, And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds. 4 8 12 14 —William Shakespeare

Q1



Q2



Q3



C

Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
And make me travel forth without my cloak,
To let base clouds o’ertake me in my way,
Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?
’Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
For no man well of such a salve can speak
That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace:
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss:
The offender’s sorrow lends but weak relief
To him that bears the strong offence’s cross.
Ah, but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,
And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds.

4



8



12

14

Shakespeare's Sonnet 34 is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, and the second of a briefer sequence (Sonnet 33 through Sonnet 36) concerned with an unspecified sin committed against the speaker by a person the speaker loves.

Sonnet 34 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet, composed of three quatrains and a final couplet. It follows the form's typical rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg. Like other Shakespearean sonnets, it is written in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. Line 12 exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:

It is possible that for Shakespeare the couplet embodied a true rhyme (as indicated by the Quarto spelling: sheeds/deeds) even though seemingly the singular shed would not have made a true rhyme with deed.

Following Horace Davis, Stephen Booth notes the similarity of this poem in theme and imagery to Sonnet 120. The quarto's "loss" was emended to "cross" by Edmond Malone and Edward Dowden; the emendation is now almost universally accepted. Gerald Massey finds an analogue to lines 7-8 in The Faerie Queene, 2.1.20.