Shakespeare Sonnet 40

‘Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all’

Dec 21, 2007 Linda Sue Grimes

Sonnet 40 exemplifies the hiatus from unity taken by the speaker that he declared in Sonnet 39, but instead of praising the poem, he appears to chiding it.

First Quatrain: “Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all”

The speaker begins by commanding “[his] love” to go ahead and relieve him of all that he loves. His poetry takes much energy, time, and dedication, so he affirms that he is giving in and letting his art take all that he is, all that he loves. Of course, his greatest love is the art itself.

But he remonstrates that even if his art succeeds in taking all of the speaker’s loves, it will not have more than it already has. Perfectly in line with the fact that his poetry already has all of his love.

The speaker plays on the word “love,” repeating it over and over with slightly different meanings: “No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call.” The first love refers to the ordinary abstract referen, while the second directly addresses his art, and the third refers back similarly to the first abstract referent, except instead of mere “love,” the speaker emphasizes it by calling it “true love.”

Second Quatrain: “Then, if for my love thou my love receivest”

In the second quatrain, the speaker continues playing on the word “love” as he addresses his poem. He muses that even if his work takes all of his love, because of his love, the poem will assuredly be blamed if it deceives itself by taking his loves when the speaker will need his loves to enrich the poem.

The poem can only deplete itself by depleting the speaker. The speaker whimsically personifies his art in order to chide it for usurping all of the speaker’s energy, time, and, of course, “love.”

Third Quatrain: “I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief”

The personification continues as the poem becomes a “gentle thief,” who has robbed the speaker of his “poverty.” Unlike a real robber who robs wealth, this “gentle thief” robs poverty from the speaker.

Paradoxically, the speaker asserts, “love knows it is a greater grief / To bear love’s wrong than hate’s known injury.” This paradox plays out in time simply on top of the theft of poverty that provides the speaker with the entanglement that only his feigned lost love can possibly rectify.

The Couplet: “Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows”

By averring that “[l]ascivious grace” would be responsible for “kill[ing]” the speaker “with spites,” the speaker repudiates the nature of affection that could divide the speaker from his art perpetually. He then seals the unification to which he has returned by demanding, “we must not be foes.” This demand is, of course, greatly understated.

Other articles on Shakespeare: Who is Shakespeare?

Sonnet Commentaries: Sonnet 1, Sonnet 2, Sonnet 3, Sonnet 4, Sonnet 5, Sonnet 6, Sonnet 7, Sonnet 8, Sonnet 9, Sonnet 10, Sonnet 11, Sonnet 12, Sonnet 13, Sonnet 14, Sonnet 15, Sonnet 16, Sonnet 17, Sonnet 18, Sonnet 19, Sonnet 20, Sonnet 21, Sonnet 22, Sonnet 23, Sonnet 24, Sonnet 25, Sonnet 26, Sonnet 27, Sonnet 28, Sonnet 29, Sonnet 30, Sonnet 31, Sonnet 32, Sonnet 33, Sonnet 34, Sonnet 35, Sonnet 36, Sonnet 37, Sonnet 38, Sonnet 39, Sonnet 73, Sonnet 116, Sonnet 126, Sonnet 130, Sonnet 138

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