Sonnet 29

When the speaker experiences shame, despair, and disappointment, he withdraws from the world with a feeling of helpless loneliness, convinced that even God has abandoned him: “I all alone beweep my outcast state, / And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries'' (Lines 2-3). His depression makes the speaker feel as if he lacked the agency to do anything; directing his anger inward, the speaker begins to negatively compare himself with the seemingly better-functioning people he sees around him. Envious, he fruitless wishes for one man’s better emotional state, another man’s good looks, the friendships a third has developed, a fourth man’s talent and skill, or yet another man’s better and more wide-ranging prospects: “Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, / Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, / Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,” (Lines 5-6).

In this passage, as the speaker points to men who ostensibly have it better than he does, he isn’t using their accomplishment as inspiration to persevere, but instead specifically describes feeling jealous of what others have (“wishing me like” and “desiring” the others’ gifts). The irony is that while the speaker is aware of his internal emotional turmoil, he fixates on the outward manifestations of others’ better luck.