Sonnet 105
Let not my love be call'd idolatry,
love
devotion
constancy
idolatry
Let not my love be call'd idolatry,
Nor my beloved as an idol show,
Since all alike my songs and praises be
To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verse to constancy confined,
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
'Fair, kind and true' is all my argument,
'Fair, kind, and true' varying to other words;
And in this change is my invention spent,
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
'Fair, kind, and true,' have often lived alone,
Which three till now never kept seat in one.
What It Means
People might say Shakespeare worships the young man like an idol. He rejects this framing. He praises one thing, one person, one kind of goodness — fair, kind, and true. This is not idolatry; this is the definition of what he loves, compressed into three words that have always described the same person. 'Fair, kind, and true is all my argument.'
Context
Part of the Fair Youth sequence. The religious frame of idolatry is directly engaged — Shakespeare is defending the ethics of his extreme devotion.
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