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A Lovers Complaint.
# SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE
To Thorpe’s ‘copy’ of the sonnets was appended a poem which had no concern with them. It consisted of 329 lines in the seven-line stanza of *Lucrece*, and was entitled ‘A Lovers Complaint. By William Shake-speare.’ The piece is a poetic lament by a maiden for her betrayal by a deceitful lover. The title constantly recurs in Elizabethan poetry.’ The tone throughout is conventional. The language is strained, and the far-fetched imagery exaggerates the worst defects of Shakespeare’s *Lucrece*. Such metaphors as the following are frequent:—
- Sometimes her levell’d eyes their carriage ride,
- As they did battery to the spheres intend. (ll. 22–3.)
- This said, his watery eyes he did dismount,
- Whose sights till then were levell’d on my face. (ll. 281–2.)
A very large number of words which are employed in the poem are found nowhere else in Shakespeare’s work. Some of these seem invented for the occasion to cover incapacity of expression. The attribution of the poem to Shakespeare may
*Cupid* (CLIII. 1 and 14); *Dyans* (CLIII. 2); *Eaves* (XCIII. 13); *Grecian* (LIII. 8); *Hellens* (LIII. 7); *Heritike* (CXXIV. 9); *Hews* (XX. 7); *Informer* (CXXV. 13); *Intrim* (LVI. 9); *Mars* (LV. 7); *Philomell* (CII. 7); *Quietus* (CXXVI. 12); *Satire* (C. 11); *Saturn* (XCVIII. 4); *Statues* (LV. 5); *Syren* (CXIX. 1); *Will* (CXXXV. 1, 2, 11, 12, 14; CXXXVI. 2, 5, 14; CXLIII. 13). In *A Lover’s Complaint* only a single word throughout is italicized—*Alloes*, in l. 273. The following words of like class to those italicized in the sonnets lack that mark of distinction: *Orient* (VII. 1); *Phoenix* (XIX. 4); *Muse* (XXXII. 10 et al. loc.); *Ocean* (LXIV. 5); *Epitaph* (LXXXI. 1); *Rhetorick* (LXXXII. 10); *Charter* (LXXXVII. 3); *Cryttick* (CXII. 11); *Cherubines* (CXIV. 6); *Phisitions* (CXL. 8).
- Two poems called ‘A Lovers Complaint’ figure in Breton’s *Arbor of Amarus Devices* (1597).
- The following are some of the once-used words in *A Lover’s Complaint*:
- *‘Acture’* (l. 185);
- *‘annexions’* (208);
- *‘bat’* [i.e. stick] (64);
- *‘credent’* (279);
- *‘encrimson’d’* (201);
- *‘ender’* (222);
- *‘enpatron’* (224);
- *‘enswathed’* (49);
- *‘extincture’* (294);
- *‘fluxive’* (50);
- *‘limpleach’d’* (205);
- *‘inundation’* (290);
- *‘invised’* (212);
- *‘laundering’* (17);
- *‘lover’d’* (320);
- *‘maund’* (36);
- *‘perceived’* (219);
- *‘phraseless’* (225);
- *‘plenitude’* (302);
- *‘sawn’* [= seen] (91);
- *‘sheaved’ hat* (31);
- *‘termless’* (94).
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