Sonnet 44

Sonnet 44 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. Sonnet 44 is continued in Sonnet 45.

Structure

Sonnet 44 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet, which contains three quatrains followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form, ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, and is written in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The fifth line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:


 × / × / × / × / × / 
No matter then although my foot did stand

The sonnet is quite regular metrically, but implements a few variations, for example in the first and last lines:


 × × / / × / × / × / 
If the dull substance of my flesh were thought, 
 × / × / / × × / × / 
But heavy tears, badges of either's woe.

...which contain, respectively, a rightward movement of the first ictus, and a mid-line reversal.

Critics have mentioned Sonnet 44 is directly coupled to Sonnet 45 and lacks a definite conclusion.