Rationalizing Rejection in Sonnet 42

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Sonnet 42: Rationalizing Rejection Shakespeare’s Sonnet 42 is about a man, the speaker, who is contemplating the loss of his lover to his friend. The speaker is exploring the motive for his lover’s choice of betrayal; more notably he is attempting to explain why this betrayal has occurred with a series of different rationalizations. The speaker appears to believe that he will not be as pained by his loss if he were to rationalize why his lover betrayed him. Shakespeare notoriously wrote three separate types of sonnets. The first set is Sonnets 1-126 which discuss a young man and often deal with the element of time. Sonnet 42 falls into the “young man” category and this character is present as the speaker’s friend. The introduction to this English sonnet, the first quatrain, has the speaker explaining that he is not upset that his friend, the character of the young man, has his lover; rather he is upset that his lover has the young man. Lines 1 and 3 exemplify this, “That thou hast her, it is not all my grief,” “That she hath thee, is of my wailing chief.” This rationalization gives the impression that the speaker is not affected with the young man finding new love even though he is upset for his loss. However, this is not a convincing argument because the reader can observe in the same quatrain, line 4, when he further grieves his loss, “A loss in love that touches me more nearly.” Obviously the speaker’s feelings are not as he expresses in the first three lines because he closes the quatrain with another mention of how dear the lover’s love was to him. The second quatrain of Sonnet 42 begins with the speaker’s second and most complex attempt to rationalize the situation as he pretends that he is not affected by ... ... middle of paper ... ...ith all loss is love. The speaker cannot see this connection between loving and losing, thus cannot articulate how he feels about the love and loss of the young man and his lover. The betrayal and rejection between the young man and his lover causes the speaker to over analyze the situation to a point where he attempts to find a happy outcome to avoid future pain. Yet, it is never revealed to the reader that the speaker finds true closure. As opposed to focusing his concentration on loss and love, and betrayal and rejection, his main thesis should have been based on loyalty and friendship. With these themes he could have avoided his attempts to rationalize and discovered there was no reason to lament because his lover was obviously not truly loyal to him and the young man was not genuine in his friendship. Thus, losing the two would not have been so great a loss.

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