Sonnet 105 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.
Synopsis
The poet denies that his love is a form of idolatry and that the youth himself is an idol. He insists that he has been constantly devoted to the values of fairness, kindness and truth. Being three themes united in the figure of the youth, there is great scope for verse, since they have never been united in one person before.
The language used is similar in some respects to the language in the Book of Common Prayer used to describe the Holy Trinity, and Shakespeare's triple repetition of the three attributes of the Fair Youth - "Three themes in one" - makes plain his deliberate comparison of the youth to a form of deity or idol, even as he purports not to engage in idolatry (in the sense of polytheistic worship of idols).
Structure
Sonnet 105 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form ABAB CDCD EFEF GG and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The 3rd line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:
× / × / × / × / × /
Since all alike my songs and praises be (105.3) / = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus.
The sonnet embraces a large number of stresses in normally non-stressed positions. These appear as inversions and non-ictic stresses, both of which appear in line 10:
× / × / / × × / × /
Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words; (105.10)
Here, both "fair" and "kind" are fully stressed, but in a regular reading only "kind" is metrically marked, "fair" being a non-ictic stress. In contrast, "varying" (which the meter demands function as two syllables) is a mid-line inversion. Both variations recur several times in this sonnet.
Context
Sonnet 105 falls broadly into the group of Sonnets addressed to a "Fair Youth", which ranges from Sonnets 1-126. This group of sonnets address an unnamed youth who acted as the object of Shakespeare's love. The nature of that love has often been debated, namely whether it was romantic or platonic in nature, The consensus is generally that they are more romantic in nature, judging by the classic romantic language used in Sonnets like the famous 18th ("shall I compare thee to a Summer's day"), and the poet's lamentation that the youth was not born a woman in Sonnet 20. The youth's identity is also often disputed, and his true identity is not known for certain. However, one of the more probable candidates is that of Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton. This theory states that the Earl, one of Shakespeare's patrons, became the subject of Shakespeare's love, and the majority of the Sonnets are addressed to him. More specifically, Sonnet 105 occupies a group of sonnets within the Fair Youth sequence, from 97 to 105, that seem to indicate happiness at the return of Shakespeare's love, the addressee. In the group prior to this, the poet expressed sadness at his muse's extended absence. It appears, however, that the Fair Youth's return yielded a happier series of poems, in which Shakespeare describes the return of his muse and speaks of the youth with "a lighter heart, and once more exalts his virtues, truth and constancy" For historians like Massey, the sonnet is mainly an honest expression of happiness and joy at the chance to return to the lofty romance language that defined his more melancholy period.