Sonnet 34: you promised sunshine, so I left my cloak at home
Sonnet 34 begins with a grievance anyone caught in a downpour will recognise. A beautiful morning lured the speaker outside without his coat, and then filthy clouds rolled in. Apologies and sunshine afterwards, he says, cannot undo the insult. Then, in the final two lines, a few tears change everything.
The opening question is an accusation disguised as weather. Why did the beloved promise such a beautiful day and send the speaker travelling without his cloak, only to let low clouds overtake him and hide that splendour in their rotten smoke? The friend is the sun, and the betrayal is a sudden withdrawal of warmth.
The second quatrain rejects half-measures. It is not enough for the sun to break through and dry the rain on a face beaten by the storm. Nobody, the speaker argues, can praise a salve that heals the wound but leaves the disgrace untouched. The medical vocabulary continues: the beloved's shame cannot act as medicine for his grief, and repentance does not return what was lost.
Line eleven sums up the injured party's position with a proverb-like precision. The offender's sorrow gives only feeble relief to the one who carries the cross of the offence. The religious image of bearing a cross gives the complaint real weight, and for twelve lines the poem seems set on refusing forgiveness.
Then comes the reversal: "Ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds, / And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds." Tears become jewels valuable enough to buy back every wrong. Such late swerves were Shakespeare's stock in trade across genres. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories; he wrote chiefly tragedies until 1608, including Hamlet and King Lear; and he ended his career with tragicomedies, or romances, such as The Tempest, in which reconciliation arrives after long injury.
Source: Sonnet 34: Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day
