Acknowledgement: This work has been summarized using The Complete Works
of Shakespeare Updated Fourth Ed., Longman Addison-Wesley, ed. David
Bevington, 1997. Quotations are for the most part taken from that work,
as are paraphrases of his commentary.
Overall Impression: This poem was pleasant enough.
Per Bevington: This poem was published, along with his sonnets,
without WS's permission. It takes the form of the Elizabethan poetic genre, the
"complaint", in which typically there is a pastoral setting, rustic
shepherds and shepherdesses, plaintive laments of deserted or unrequited
lovers, etc. These complaints often bewailed moralistically the hazards of
blind passion and might have been used didactically. This poem presents
multiple points of view: the poet-narrator, the spurned maiden, the old
shepherd, and the male wooer. It portrays in rich metaphorical language the
tense and bitter struggle between the sexes also seen in the "Dark
Lady" sonnets.
Line 1: The poet begins his tale of overhearing the distraught
maid as she tears up letters, breaks rings, etc. She is still somewhat young in
looks, despite her great distress. Her hair is partially disordered. 36 She
throws love tokens, letters (some penned in blood), and rings drawn from her
basket into the river. She cries out in tears about the falseness of her wooer.
57 An old shepherd, once himself a swaggerer and man about town, overhears her
and descends the river bank to offer her a sympathetic ear and
consolation.
Line 71: She tells him her story. She is still young despite her
appearance. She listened to the wooer's suit too early in her life. His curly
brown hair gave him an appearance as in Paradise. He had only an early growth
of beard and was beautiful in manner and form. He could ride a horse well. He
was skilled in speech to make the weeper laugh and the laugher weep. He
enchanted both sexes, and women gave themselves to him even when he did not
seek it. 135 Many became obsessed with his image and came to think of
themselves as his mistress. But she kept her distance cautiously for a while,
but eventually appetite overcame reason. 169 She knew him to be untrue and was
aware of his past treacheries; she knew of the children he had sired in others.
But he began to besiege her, arguing as follows:
Line 177: Have some pity on my suffering. I have been called to love
before without inviting it. I made past errors of blood (mere physical acts),
not of the mind or of love. No woman has kindled in me such heart warming
passion. 197 He shows her the love tokens and treasures other women have given
him: diamond, emerald, sapphire, opal, etc. He is willing to give all these to
her as one sacrifices at an altar. Here is a love token given him by a woman
who had become a nun. She had rare beauty but rejected the suits of the men in
court, at least before she met him. It isn't difficult to give up something
that has not yet been tried. 246 After he came before her eyes, she wanted to
give up her vows for his love--she who had wanted to be cloistered to remove
herself from temptation now wanted to be free to venture everything for love.
264 Love is so powerful that neither vows, bonds, nor confinement cannot stop
it. 274 The many hearts that other women have extended to him feel his heart
aching because of her resistance, and supplicate her to give in. They also help
to prove the credibility and truthfulness of his pledge of love. He looks down
tearfully.
Line 288: She stops quoting him and speaks her own thoughts. What
witchcraft there is in a tear--even a rocky heart is worn down by a tear. His
tears and crafty passion stole her reason and led to her loss of chastity. But
afterwards his tears poisoned her, though hers had restored him. 302 He can
assume whatever forms he wishes to accomplish his goals. No woman's heart can
resist his determined assault. He disguised his lechery with talk of purity and
chastity. 316 He concealed his inner fiendish self with an outer garment of
grace. Who would not surrender to such a man? To receive again such pleasure as
she experienced when she fell, she might fall again. 323 His infectious tears,
his passionate cheeks, the forced thunder of his heart, his sad looks, all his
affected passion could yet betray this penitent maid again.
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