Mourning, Moaning, and Selflessness: Shakespeare's Sonnets 71-75

Published: June 6, 2022, 1:37 p.m.

This cycle of sonnets delves into some thoughts of death, or uses thoughts of mortality to describe the process of breaking up. 

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The poet spins out a bunch of metaphors describing their own exhaustion, the end of their time. They meditate on their own death as a way of bringing into focus what remains important. 

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The poet doesn't want their name to be remembered. When it boils down to their essence, the distillation of a life, it is only the love that exists in the poetry they care to have considered.

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Is this a kind of false grieving, designed to evoke pity? Or is it authentic expression of disappointed love?

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