Sonnet 114

Sonnet 114 in the 1609 Quarto

Q1 Q2 Q3 C	Or whether doth my mind, being crown’d with you, Drink up the monarch’s plague, this flattery? Or whether shall I say, mine eye saith true, And that your love taught it this alchemy, To make of monsters and things indigest Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble, Creating every bad a perfect best, As fast as objects to his beams assemble? O, ’tis the first; ’tis flattery in my seeing, And my great mind most kingly drinks it up: Mine eye well knows what with his gust is ’greeing, And to his palate doth prepare the cup: If it be poison’d, ’tis the lesser sin That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.	4 8 12 14
	—William Shakespeare^[1]

Sonnet 114 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.

Synopsis

Is the poet's mind flattered, like a king, by the youth's presence, or is it simply a truth that is being told by his eyes that ugly things are made beautiful by the mental image of the youth? Surely it must be flattery, that he consumes like a king. He knows he enjoys it even if it's poisonous. Even if it is, it's less of a sin because his eye is motivated by love.

Structure

Sonnet 114 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form abab cdcd efef gg and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The 7th line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:

  ×/ ×   /   ×  /  ×  /  ×    / 
Creating every bad a perfect best, (114.7)

Lines 6, 8, 9, and 11 have a final extrametrical syllable or feminine ending:

 ×     / × /   ×   ×     /    /    × / (×) 
Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble, (114.6)

/ = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus. (×) = extrametrical syllable.

Line 6 exhibits another metrical variation, the rightward movement of the third ictus (resulting in a four-position figure, × × / /, sometimes referred to as a minor ionic). Minor ionics may potentially be found in lines 5 and 10. Another metrical variation, a mid-line reversal, is found in line 4:

×     /   ×    /    /     ×    ×  /   × / 
And that your love taught it this alchemy, (114.4)

An initial reversal is potentially present in line 2.

The meter demands a few variant pronunciations: Line 1's "being" functions as one syllable, and line 9's "flattery" as two.^[2]

Notes

↑ Pooler, C[harles] Knox, ed. (1918). The Works of Shakespeare: Sonnets. The Arden Shakespeare [1st series]. London: Methuen & Company. OCLC 4770201.
↑ Booth 2000, p. 375, 99.

References

First edition and facsimile

Shakespeare, William (1609). Shake-speares Sonnets: Never Before Imprinted. London: Thomas Thorpe.
Lee, Sidney, ed. (1905). Shakespeares Sonnets: Being a reproduction in facsimile of the first edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. OCLC 458829162.

Variorum editions

Alden, Raymond Macdonald, ed. (1916). The Sonnets of Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. OCLC 234756.
Rollins, Hyder Edward, ed. (1944). A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: The Sonnets [2 Volumes]. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. OCLC 6028485.

Modern critical editions

Atkins, Carl D., ed. (2007). Shakespeare's Sonnets: With Three Hundred Years of Commentary. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN 978-0-8386-4163-7. OCLC 86090499.
Booth, Stephen, ed. (2000) [1st ed. 1977]. Shakespeare's Sonnets (Rev. ed.). New Haven: Yale Nota Bene. ISBN 0-300-01959-9. OCLC 2968040.
Burrow, Colin, ed. (2002). The Complete Sonnets and Poems. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0192819338. OCLC 48532938.
Duncan-Jones, Katherine, ed. (2010) [1st ed. 1997]. Shakespeare's Sonnets. The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series (Rev. ed.). London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-4080-1797-5. OCLC 755065951.
Evans, G. Blakemore, ed. (1996). The Sonnets. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521294034. OCLC 32272082.
Kerrigan, John, ed. (1995) [1st ed. 1986]. The Sonnets ; and, A Lover's Complaint. New Penguin Shakespeare (Rev. ed.). Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-070732-8. OCLC 15018446.
Mowat, Barbara A.; Werstine, Paul, eds. (2006). Shakespeare's Sonnets & Poems. Folger Shakespeare Library. New York: Washington Square Press. ISBN 978-0743273282. OCLC 64594469.
Orgel, Stephen, ed. (2001). The Sonnets. The Pelican Shakespeare (Rev. ed.). New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0140714531. OCLC 46683809.
Vendler, Helen, ed. (1997). The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-63712-7. OCLC 36806589.

William Shakespeare

Plays

Tragedies	Antony and Cleopatra Coriolanus Hamlet Julius Caesar King Lear Macbeth Othello Romeo and Juliet Sir Thomas More* Timon of Athens Titus Andronicus Troilus and Cressida

Comedies	All's Well That Ends Well As You Like It The Comedy of Errors Cymbeline Love's Labour's Lost Measure for Measure The Merchant of Venice The Merry Wives of Windsor A Midsummer Night's Dream Much Ado About Nothing Pericles, Prince of Tyre* The Taming of the Shrew The Tempest Twelfth Night The Two Gentlemen of Verona The Two Noble Kinsmen* The Winter's Tale Cardenio* Love's Labour's Won

Histories	King John Edward III* Richard II 1 Henry IV 2 Henry IV Henry V 1 Henry VI* 2 Henry VI* 3 Henry VI* Richard III Henry VIII*

See also	Problem plays Late romances Characters A–K L–Z Chronology Performances Settings Quarto publications First Folio Second Folio

Poems

Life
and works

Legacy

* Shakespeare and other authors
Lost

Shakespeare's sonnets

"Fair Youth" sonnets

Procreation sonnets	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Rival Poet sonnets	78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86

"Envoy"	126

"Dark Lady" sonnets

"Anacreontics"	153 154

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