Sonnet 66

    Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,

    Frequently compared to Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' — same catalog structure, same desire for death as rest, same counter-argument that others would suffer for it.

    despair
    society
    love
    mortality
    Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
     
    As, to behold desert a beggar born,
     
    And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
     
    And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
     
    And guilded honour shamefully misplaced,
     
    And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
     
    And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
     
    And strength by limping sway disabled,
     
    And art made tongue-tied by authority,
     
    And folly doctor-like controlling skill,
     
    And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
     
    And captive good attending captain ill:
     
    Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
     
    Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

    What It Means

    Shakespeare lists everything he's sick of. Merit dismissed, faith broken, honor degraded, arts censored, stupidity rewarded, wrong triumphant, right suppressed, truth called lying, good put in the service of bad. Each line is a separate complaint — it reads like a list of grievances against the world. It echoes Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' soliloquy in structure and feeling. The only thing stopping him from choosing death is that dying would leave the young man alone. Love is the only reason to stay in a world this badly run.

    Context

    Part of the Fair Youth sequence. Sonnet 66 is often cited as evidence of Shakespeare's disillusionment with Elizabethan society. No specific biographical event has been confirmed as the trigger.

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