Sonnet 66: Tired with All These, for Restful Death I Cry
Sonnet 66: Tired with All These, for Restful Death I Cry - form Summary
Sonnet's Accumulating Complaint
This is a Shakespearean sonnet that uses the sonnet's fixed structure to build a list of social and moral grievances across three quatrains. Each quatrain presents injustices—corrupt honour, betrayed faith, incompetence in authority—creating cumulative despair. The closing rhymed couplet performs the volta: the speaker expresses suicidal weariness but refuses death because it would abandon a beloved. The form channels complaint into a sudden, personal resolution.
Read Complete AnalysesTired with all these, for restful death I cry, As to behold desert a beggar born, And needy nothing trimmed in jollity, And purest faith unhappily forsworn, And gilded honour shamefully misplaced, And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, And right perfection wrongfully disgraced, And strength by limping sway disablèd And art made tongue-tied by authority, And folly doctor-like controlling skill, And simple truth miscalled simplicity, And captive good attending captain ill. Tired with all these, from these would I be gone, Save that to die, I leave my love alone.
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