SONNETCAST – William Shakespeare's Sonnets Recited, Revealed, Relived - Sonnet 36: Let Me Confess That We Two Must Be Twain

Sonnet 36: Let Me Confess That We Two Must Be Twain

05/21/23 • 21 min

SONNETCAST – William Shakespeare's Sonnets Recited, Revealed, Relived

With the curious Sonnet 36 William Shakespeare appears to be either inverting the guilt and shame that the previous three sonnets have laid upon the young man for his evident transgression and projecting it directly on himself, or to be uncovering a new source of scandal that gives him reason to suggest – borderline disingenuously, it might seem – that they dissociate themselves from each other, even though in the same breath it also emphatically confirms the love they hold for each other.

Previous Episode

Sonnet 35: No More Be Grieved at That Which Thou Hast Done

With his tormented, paradoxical, and sensationally revealing Sonnet 35, William Shakespeare absolves the young man of his misdeed and puts what has happened down to nothing in the world being perfect, not even he. It is the third in this set of three sonnets that might be considered a triptych, and with it, Shakespeare appears to resign himself into the triangular complexity his relationship with the young man has acquired, while dropping a nugget of information that to us comes as something of a poetic bombshell.

Next Episode

Sonnet 37: As a Decrepit Father Takes Delight

In the first of three sonnets that appear to disrupt the sequence that concerns itself with the young man's evident infidelity, Sonnet 37 revisits the themes previously encountered of the poet's keenly felt lack of luck, absence of esteem, and sorely missing success, and contrasts this with the young man's abundant riches, both material and metaphorical, describing them as a source of sustenance and survival even while Fortune bestows her gifts elsewhere.