Shakespeare Sonnet 29 Tone

Jealousy and sadness are some of the most raw and primal feelings in the human arsenal. In Shakespeare’s sonnet 29 these emotions are presented though a man struggling with his lonesome and desolate life. The speaker in this sonnet begins by complaining about his life and envying other men but halfway through the poem there is a crucial change and he seems as though he is a completely new person. The speaker in sonnet 29 uses the theme of God’s wrath, exaggerated diction, and self-pity to illustrate the depths to which his life has sunk and to express his love for his friend.
In the speaker’s somber address to his close friend, he makes frequent references to God and other religious imagery. He is left devastated from the absence of his friend
In lines 1 through 8 the speaker is describing his life in extremely pessimistic language. When the speaker is all alone and filled with jealousy he turns to heaven to express his sorrow but not even God will listen to his cries. After thinking of the friend by chance, the speaker is so infatuated that he says, “for thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings that I scorn to change my state with kings” (13-14). This expression of love and happiness is completely opposite to what he has been previously saying about his life. The speaker spends the first 7 lines saying that he wishes he was richer and had more friends yet now he wouldn’t change places with royalty if he was given the chance just because he thought about his friend. In the discussion of where the poem shifts diction Helen Vendler, author of The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, says, “As often in Shakespeare, the analytic moment (here, line 8) in the sonnet becomes the fulcrum of change. The active narrative in the habitual present tense yields to a stunning moment of self-analysis: With what I most enjoyed contented least” (162). The moment where the speaker considers himself instead of reflecting on the life of other people is when the transition occurs. The speaker looking inward is a reaffirmation of his self worth and he expresses this new found happiness in himself through his obsession with his friend. In contrast, Camille Paglia states, “The main body of the sentence (subject and verb: ‘I think’) doesn't arrive until the tenth line, where it acts as a pivotal point of transformation” (9). Paglia believes that the “pivotal point” does not arrive until later in the poem, a seemingly minute detail yet it has a drastic effect on how the Sonnet is read and interpreted. Vendler believes that the change comes from a moment of self reflection while Paglia