Sonnet 74

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The first eleven lines of Sonnet 74 in the 1609 Quarto
Q1 Q2 Q3 C But be contented when that fell arrest Without all bail shall carry me away; My life hath in this line some interest, Which for memorial still with thee shall stay. When thou reviewest this, thou dost review The very part was consecrate to thee; The earth can have but earth, which is his due, My spirit is thine, the better part of me; So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life, The prey of worms, my body being dead, The coward conquest of a wretch’s knife, Too base of thee to be remembered; The worth of that, is that which it contains, And that is this, and this with thee remains. 4 8 12 14 —William Shakespeare[1]

Sonnet 74 is one of 154 sonnets published by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare in 1609. It is one of the Fair Youth sequence.

Synopsis

This sonnet takes back the urging that occurs in Sonnet 71, that the young man should forget the author. Instead, this sonnet encourages the youth to keep the better part of the poet, which is in his verse, and which will outlive the poet. There is a sense in this poem that the young man is like one who will potentially inherit something of value, and is at the bedside of a dying rich relation, and is considering in a legalistic manner what that value will be – once the dead body has been carried away and dumped in the earth as food for worms. The young man will inherit the best part of the poet – his spirit in the form of this sonnet.^[2]

Structure

Sonnet 74 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet, which contains three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, and is composed in iambic pentameter, a poetic metre in which each line has five feet, and each foot is a pair of weak/strong syllables. The tenth line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter line:

  ×   /  ×    /     ×  / ×  / ×    / 
The prey of worms, my body being dead; (74.10)

/ = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus.

The meter demands a few variant pronunciations: line 4's "memorial" counts as 3 syllables,^[3] line 8's "spirit" counts as 1 (possibly pronounced as spear't, sprite, sprit, or spurt),^[4] and line 12's "rememberèd" is expanded to 4.^[5]

Possible allusion to St. Anne Line

Some scholars feel Sonnet 74 alludes to Catholic Saint Anne Line and her martyrdom at the time of Reformation.^[6] Along with the sonnet, the Shakespeare poem "The Phoenix and the Turtle" and the play The Tempest are also cited as alluding to St. Anne.^[7]

Notes

1. Shakespeare, William. Duncan-Jones, Katherine. Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Bloomsbury Arden 2010. p. 259 ISBN 9781408017975.
2. Shakespeare, William. Ingram, William. Redpath, Theodore. Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Barnes & Noble. 1965.
3. Kerrigan 1995, p. 267.
4. Booth 2000, p. 262.
5. Kerrigan 1995, p. 113.
6. "Ælfflæd of Whitby, Letter to Abbess Adolana in Germany", The Cambridge Anthology of British Medieval Latin, Cambridge University Press, pp. 154–157, 31 January 2024, ISBN 978-1-316-89069-1, retrieved 1 March 2024
7. Dodwell, Martín (2013). Anne Line: Shakespeare's Tragic Muse. Brighton: The Book Guild. ISBN 9781846249310.

References

First edition and facsimile

• Shakespeare, William (1609). Shake-speares Sonnets: Never Before Imprinted. London: Thomas Thorpe.
• Lee, Sidney, ed. (1905). Shakespeares Sonnets: Being a reproduction in facsimile of the first edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. OCLC 458829162.

Variorum editions

• Alden, Raymond Macdonald, ed. (1916). The Sonnets of Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. OCLC 234756.
• Rollins, Hyder Edward, ed. (1944). A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: The Sonnets [2 Volumes]. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. OCLC 6028485. — Volume I and Volume II at the Internet Archive

Modern critical editions

• Atkins, Carl D., ed. (2007). Shakespeare's Sonnets: With Three Hundred Years of Commentary. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN 978-0-8386-4163-7. OCLC 86090499.
• Booth, Stephen, ed. (2000) [1st ed. 1977]. Shakespeare's Sonnets (Rev. ed.). New Haven: Yale Nota Bene. ISBN 0-300-01959-9. OCLC 2968040.
• Burrow, Colin, ed. (2002). The Complete Sonnets and Poems. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0192819338. OCLC 48532938.
• Duncan-Jones, Katherine, ed. (2010) [1st ed. 1997]. Shakespeare's Sonnets. Arden Shakespeare, third series (Rev. ed.). London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-4080-1797-5. OCLC 755065951. — 1st edition at the Internet Archive
• Evans, G. Blakemore, ed. (1996). The Sonnets. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521294034. OCLC 32272082.
• Kerrigan, John, ed. (1995) [1st ed. 1986]. The Sonnets ; and, A Lover's Complaint. New Penguin Shakespeare (Rev. ed.). Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-070732-8. OCLC 15018446.
• Mowat, Barbara A.; Werstine, Paul, eds. (2006). Shakespeare's Sonnets & Poems. Folger Shakespeare Library. New York: Washington Square Press. ISBN 978-0743273282. OCLC 64594469.
• Orgel, Stephen, ed. (2001). The Sonnets. The Pelican Shakespeare (Rev. ed.). New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0140714531. OCLC 46683809.
• Vendler, Helen, ed. (1997). The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-63712-7. OCLC 36806589.