Sonnet 29

“Sonnet 29,” by the English poet and playwright William Shakespeare, was published around 1609, although most likely it was written ten years earlier. Like many of Shakespeare’s sonnets, “Sonnet 29” is a love poem. However, instead of focusing on the physical beauty of the love interest or the poet’s erotic desire, “Sonnet 29” describes the power of love to help the speaker remain strong even in the midst of self-doubt. In this sonnet, love compensates for physical shortcomings, emotional injuries, and personal setbacks, becoming something greater than infatuation or sexual attraction. The poem describes all the ways that the speaker is made to feel unworthy or self-conscious: his financial failings, his lack of friendships, the jealousy he feels towards others for what they have. But when the speaker is reminded of the poem’s addressee, he feels so comforted and emboldened that he would not trade his life for a king’s.

This elevated idealization of love has made some scholars argue that the poem is about a homosocial or homosexual, rather than heterosexual, relationship—the somewhat sexist idea that intellectually and emotionally transcendent love would only have been available to Shakespeare with a man.

Poet Biography

While his exact birthdate is unknown, records indicate that William Shakespeare was baptized in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, on April 26, 1564.