
English Wordplay ~ Listen and Enjoy
Sonnet 75

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A. L. Rowse in his Shakespeare's Sonnets writes: 'The filching age' describes the situation aptly, for there was keen competition for a patron, when it was sometimes a question of survival as a poet. This sonnet inaugurates a new sequence, in which the literary situation becomes the dominating them: the appearance of a rival poet on the scene, who threatens to take Shakespeare's place in his favour.
So are you to my thoughts as food to life, Or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground; And for the peace of you I hold such strife As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found. Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure; Now counting best to be with you alone, Then better'd that the world may see my pleasure: Sometime all full with feasting on your sight, And by and by clean starved for a look; Possessing or pursuing no delight, Save what is had, or must from you be took. Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day, Or gluttoning on all, or all away.
Introduction to the Sonnets
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