Sonnet 58

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Sonnet 58 in the 1609 Quarto
Q1 Q2 Q3 C That god forbid that made me first your slave, I should in thought control your times of pleasure, Or at your hand the account of hours to crave, Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure! O, let me suffer, being at your beck, The imprison’d absence of your liberty; And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each check, Without accusing you of injury. Be where you list, your charter is so strong That you yourself may privilege your time: Do what you will; to you it doth belong Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime. I am to wait, though waiting so be hell, Not blame your pleasure, be it ill or well. 4 8 12 14 —William Shakespeare

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Q2



Q3



C

That god forbid that made me first your slave,
I should in thought control your times of pleasure,
Or at your hand the account of hours to crave,
Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure!
O, let me suffer, being at your beck,
The imprison’d absence of your liberty;
And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each check,
Without accusing you of injury.
Be where you list, your charter is so strong
That you yourself may privilege your time:
Do what you will; to you it doth belong
Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime.
I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,
Not blame your pleasure, be it ill or well.

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8



12

14

Shakespeare's Sonnet 58 is a syntactic and thematic continuation of Sonnet 57. More generally, it belongs to the large group of sonnets written to a young, aristocratic man, with whom the poem's speaker shares a tempestuous relationship. In this poem, the speaker complains of the beloved's voluntary absence, using the occasion to outline a more general lament against his own powerlessness and the indifference of the young man.

Sonnet 58 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The Shakespearean sonnet contains three quatrains followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the form's typical rhyme, abab cdcd efef gg and is written a type of poetic metre called iambic pentameter based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The first line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter; the second adds a final extrametrical syllable or feminine ending:

The meter demands a few variant pronunciations. Lines three and six require the contraction of "the" and the ensuing word: "th'account" (two syllables) and "th'imprisoned" (three syllables). In line three "hours" is one syllable, and in line seven "sufferance" is two.

Line 6 is obscure. Nicolaus Delius glosses it "Let me bear the fact that the liberty you possess is wanting to me, a captive." While recognizing that Delius might be correct, Edward Dowden suggests "The separation from you, which is proper to your state of freedom, but which to me is imprisonment."