| Sonnet 93 |
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So shall I live, supposing thou art true, |
| –William Shakespeare |
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Sonnet 93 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.
Contrary to the previous sonnet, Sonnet 92, in which Shakespeare tries to question the young man's morals and character, he may now be fluctuant in his character without his own knowledge. Shakespeare also goes ahead and basically refutes what he had said in the previous sonnet, now saying that the young man is a good person with upstanding morals. He goes on to say, “For there can live no hatred in thine eye.” He is now refuting his previous statements and stating that the boy can not have bad morals or vice.
In the first quatrain of the sonnet, the poet says, “So shall I live, supposing thou art true”, illustrating the initial doubt in the young man's moral character. Gradually, he starts to reason that the youth's beauty outweighs his moral flaws, a sort of superficial and narcisstic belief that the poet had previously criticized in earlier sonnets. The poet goes on to speak about the young man's facial beauty, without considering the virtue of the young man. Shakespeare acknowledges this possibility by saying, “How like Eve’s apple doth thy beauty grow", showing a connection to Adam and Eve, and how Eve's external beauty was countered by her internal moral lack of character.