Sonnet notes 10

Sonnet 23, line 6: “The perfect ceremony of love’s rite”

How many lovers have worried about getting the ceremony of love’s rite perfect? This sonnet portrays the problem well—it’s not just fear of trust in himself, anxiety, but also the burden of his own love’s might, excessive emotion, that causes the poet’s decay, his weakness. So he must appeal to the Young Man to hear with eyes, and see in his looks the love that other tongues may have expressed better.* The irony is that it’s hard to imagine a more perfect ceremony of love’s rite than Sonnet 23. Did he have him at “hello?”

*looks is a common emendation for books in line 9, an essential one I think.