“Sonnet 29,” by the English poet and playwright William Shakespeare, was published around 1609, although most likely it was written ten years earlier. Like many of Shakespeare’s sonnets, “Sonnet 29” is a love poem. However, instead of focusing on the physical beauty of the love interest or the poet’s erotic desire, “Sonnet 29” describes the power of love to help the speaker remain strong even in the midst of self-doubt. In this sonnet, love compensates for physical shortcomings, emotional injuries, and personal setbacks, becoming something greater than infatuation or sexual attraction. The poem describes all the ways that the speaker is made to feel unworthy or self-conscious: his financial failings, his lack of friendships, the jealousy he feels towards others for what they have. But when the speaker is reminded of the poem’s addressee, he feels so comforted and emboldened that he would not trade his life for a king’s.

This elevated idealization of love has made some scholars argue that the poem is about a homosocial or homosexual, rather than heterosexual, relationship—the somewhat sexist idea that intellectually and emotionally transcendent love would only have been available to Shakespeare with a man.

Poet Biography

While his exact birthdate is unknown, records indicate that William Shakespeare was baptized in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, on April 26, 1564. Shakespeare was the eldest child of John Shakespeare, a prominent figure who eventually became bailiff, the highest town official. Shakespeare attended the King’s New School in Stratford; in 1582, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, Hamnet, and Judith.

Shakespeare lived during the height of the English Renaissance. As Queen Elizabeth I imposed a period of relative political and religious calm, conditions were ripe for a so-called golden age in which the arts, including the theater, flourished. In the 1580s, Shakespeare began a successful career as an actor, playwright, and part owner of an acting company called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, later renamed the King’s Men. Between the years of 1589 and 1613, he wrote most of his plays and poetry, including comedies including A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Much Ado about Nothing, histories including the three Henry IV plays and Titus Andronicus, and tragedies including Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Macbeth. Shakespeare wrote and collaborated on nearly 40 plays, 154 sonnets, and three long narrative poems. Most of these works were not published until after Shakespeare’s death in April of 1616, when friends and colleagues put out relatively definitive versions as the First Folio.

Shakespeare is universally regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and one of the world’s greatest dramatists. His plays have been translated into most languages and are the most frequently performed of any playwright in history. His examinations of love, power, life, and other philosophical questions remain relevant, and continue to be studied, analyzed, and reinterpreted to this day.

Poem Text

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

(Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

      For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

      That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Shakespeare, William. “Sonnet 29.” 1609. The Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The poem opens with the speaker describing a state of despair. Whenever he comes upon bad luck and hard times, he feels hopeless and sad, crying by himself and calling out to God, who does not hear him or answer. He feels sorry for himself and hates his circumstances. The speaker is jealous of many other men, pointing out one who has a better attitude towards life, another who is more attractive, or a third who has more friends. The speaker also wishes he could be like a man who is supremely skilled, or one who has a wide range of prospects. In these moments of depression, the speaker loses interest in all the usual things he is good at and enjoys. But, even when he has almost come to hate himself, all he needs to do is think about the object of his love, and his mood and outlook completely changes. When he thinks of the person about whom he has written this poem, the speaker becomes like a lark at dawn taking flight from the muddy ground—his mental state changes so much, he feels like he is singing songs at the gates of heaven. All of this happens because whenever the speaker remembers the love he and the poem’s addressee share, it brings him so much richness he wouldn’t even trade places with a king.