First Quatrain: “Tir’d with all these, for restful death I cry”
In the opening quatrain of sonnet 66, the speaker makes his bold claim that he “cries” for “restful death,” because he is “[t]ir’d with all these” things. He then uses the rest of the sonnet to list those things he has grown tired of and also to show why they have fatigued him.
His first complaint is that people who seem to deserve a good life are often born into poverty. Seeing this situation and trying to understand its implications have made the speaker weary.
Then he offers the next item on his list which contrasts with the first: those who are less deserving are often “trimm’d in jollity,” while those with better claim go lacking. And those who possess “purest faith” are often “unhappily forsworn.”
The speaker is dramatizing the contrasts that exist on the physical plane, making known his condemnation of one while elevating the value of the other.
Second Quatrain: “And gilded honour shamefully misplac’d”
The second quatrain continues the speaker’s list of complaints: honor is misplaced; virtue is prostituted; perfection falls short; strength is “disabled” by “limping sway.”
The speaker is offering generalities that hold true for any generation. There is always a current example of honor being “shamefully misplac’d.” In the 20th and 21st centuries, the honor of the Nobel Peace Prize has suffered tremendously as partisan committees have degraded that prize by awarding it to terrorists and political hacks.
Third Quatrain: “And art made tongue-tied by authority”
The speaker continues his list of observations that annoy him to ennui: art is compromised by misguided movements; folly is controlled by “doctor-like” automatons; “simple truth” is made simplistic by being mislabeled “simplicity”; and good is highjacked by bad.
Current examples of “art made tongue-tied by authority” are the movements of modernist and postmodernist art usurping the stage once occupied by craft and the pursuit of truth, replacing the former excellence with solipsistic gobbledygook.
The Couplet: “Tir’d with all these, from these would I be gone”
The speaker again reiterates that he is tired of all this duplicity, disingenuousness, and flat out hypocrisy, and again offers the thought that he would just as soon die to this world to be rid of it, except for one important reason: he would have to leave his love.
Remembering that this speaker’s most valued possession is the spirituality of his amazing talent that he employs to exalt his “love,” the reader realizes that the speaker has merely exaggerated his death wish in service of his drama of contrasts.
Other Shakespeare articles: Who is Shakespeare?
Sonnet Commentaries: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 73, 96, 116, 126, 130, 138, 146
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