Sonnet 9: “Murd’rous shame!”

Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye,

That thou consum’st thy self in single life?

Ah; if thou issueless shalt hap to die,

The world will wail thee like a makeless wife.

The world will be thy widow and still weep,

That thou no form of thee hast left behind,

When every private widow well may keep,

By children’s eyes, her husband’s shape in mind.

Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend

Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it,

But beauty’s waste hath in the world an end,

And kept unus’d the user so destroys it.

     No love toward others in that bosom sits

     That on himself such murd’rous shame commits.

“…As in Sonnets 3 and 4, this sonnet starts out with a mild tone and ends with a stern one. This change in tone is deflected by changing from the direct address of the first eight lines (thee, thine, thy, thou) to the indirect address of the remainder of the sonnet (an unthrift, the user). Everything is fairly innocent until we come upon destroys in line 12 leading up to the stinging rebuke of the murd’rous shame in the last line. Was that a slap on the face? ‘I’m tired of repeating myself. You don’t love anybody—not if you are capable of such shameful murder!’ (This is another example of the condensed adjective—murderous shame means ‘the shame that comes from being murderous.’) This is strong. Where did the murder come from? How did beauty’s waste get translated into murder?...”

—Shakespeare’s Sonnets Among His Private Friends, p. 34 (publication date Oct. 1, 2021)