Sonnet 120: That You Were Once Unkind Befriends Me Now
Sonnet 120: That You Were Once Unkind Befriends Me Now - form Summary
Couplet Resolves the Turn
This is a Shakespearean sonnet that uses three quatrains to stage reciprocal hurt and moral accounting, and a final rhymed couplet to resolve the speaker’s position. The quatrains present the speaker’s acceptance of blame and the idea that past injuries now balance each other. The couplet delivers the turn: the beloved’s former trespass becomes a fee and the speaker’s guilt ransoms that debt, sealing a reconciliatory exchange.
Read Complete AnalysesThat you were once unkind befriends me now, And for that sorrow, which I then did feel, Needs must I under my transgression bow, Unless my nerves were brass or hammered steel. For if you were by my unkindness shaken As I by yours, y’have passed a hell of time, And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken To weigh how once I suffered in your crime. O, that our night of woe might have remembered My deepest sense how hard true sorrow hits, And soon to you, as you to me then, tendered The humble salve which wounded bosoms fits! But that your trespass now becomes a fee; Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.
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