By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Sonnet 83 continues the theme Shakespeare treated in the previous sonnet, by comparing his own poetry about the Fair Youth with the poetic efforts of some rival poets. Before we move to an analysis of Sonnet 83, here’s a reminder of the poem:
I never saw that you did painting need,
And therefore to your fair no painting set;
I found, or thought I found, you did exceed
The barren tender of a poet’s debt:
And therefore have I slept in your report,
That you yourself, being extant, well might show
How far a modern quill doth come too short,
Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.
This silence for my sin you did impute,
Which shall be most my glory being dumb;
For I impair not beauty being mute,
When others would give life, and bring a tomb.
There lives more life in one of your fair eyes
Than both your poets can in praise devise.