Sonnet 30
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When to the sessions of sweet silent thought |
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| –William Shakespeare | ||
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Shakespeare's Sonnet 30, one of his most famous, is a reflection on sad memories reconciled by the realization of the gift he has in his friend. A phrase from the sonnet, "remembrance of things past," was chosen by C. K. Scott-Moncrieff as the title for his English translation of Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.
[edit] Synopsis
The sonnet begins by using courtroom metaphors ("session", "summon up" (as a witness), and "cancell'd" (as a debt). The speaker paradoxically describes solitary contemplation as "sweet" despite his inevitable rumination on sad things. Shakespeare grieves his failures and shortcomings ("I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought"), and, although the tragedy is long in the past, he "weep[s] afresh love's long since cancell'd woe". This theme of renewed sadness in contemplation figures prominently in the sonnet.
- Then can I grieve at grievances forgone
- And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
- The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,
- Which I pay new as if not paid before.
The sonnet ends with a touching statement that in his thoughts of sorrow, when he thinks of his friend, "All losses are restored and sorrows end." The sonnet is much similar in content and tone to Sonnet 29 ("When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes...").
