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Truth and Decay in Shakespeare's Sonnets

James Dawes

For sweetest things turn sourest by their

  deeds;

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

Howsoever it may pique the reader with its opacity,¹sonnet 94 achieves a concussive conclusion through its evocation of a rarely used sense: the poem terminates in thick smell. Shakespeare evokes smell, briefly, in only nine of the 154 sonnets. Sight, a sense that the poet can control, is preferred. One can close one's eyes or turn one's head, one can manipulate and sculpt the visual world; but invisible smell assaults and surprises the body, delivering a shock commensurate only to the shock of seeing an ideal downrazed, or a faith forsworn. The jarring couplet of 94 alludes, of course, to the beloved's alleged moral turpitude.² Infidelity is so pungent here because, as John Bernard argues, the young man is not merely a...

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1. Truth and Decay in Shakespeare's Sonnets
2. Copyright

1. William Shakespeare