Annotated In Shakespeare's Sonnet 29

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In Sonnet 29, the speaker is a social outcast. The speaker speaks as someone who despises themselves and their life. Throughout the poem he rants about his jealousy of other men and how he wishes for his life to be better. The poem ends on a positive note about how he changes to a positive mood when he thinks of a specific person. The poem is about loneliness, jealousy, wealth, and happiness. The sonnet opens with the speaker he has become disgraced and outcast. At this time he is poor and without many friends. He speaks of how he curses his fate and about his jealousy of other men. At the end, he talks about his thoughts of someone bringing him happiness. He ends the poem by saying they are the reason he does not scorn to change his “state with kings.” …show more content…

In the first two lines of the poem, the speaker says “When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, When I’ve fallen out of favor with fortune and men, I all alone beweep my outcast state”, indicating that a possible cause for his loneliness is that he had become disgraced earlier. In another line he states “ and look upon myself and curse my fate” showing that he has regret for whatever happened. Their state of life has left the speaker “almost despising” himself. The description in the poem paints the image of the speaker as someone who has fallen from grace and is now self-despising and lonely. Another theme in the poem is jealousy and desire. The speaker states “Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd” meaning that the speaker is poor and without friends. When the speaker says “Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,” he is expressing his desire for freedom. When he says “ desiring this man's’ art” It also shows he is unable to work in their “art”. The line “With what I most enjoy contented least;” shows the speaker no longer has what he once

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