Sonnet 35 turns the betrayed lover into his betrayer's defence lawyer
Roses have thorns, Sonnet 35 begins, and fountains have mud. The speaker is consoling a friend who has wronged him, piling up excuses from nature. Then he catches himself: by excusing the offence so eloquently, he has become complicit in it, prosecuting himself on the thief's behalf.
The first quatrain is a string of consolations drawn from the natural world. Roses carry thorns, silver fountains hide mud, clouds and eclipses darken both moon and sun, and a loathsome canker worm can live in the sweetest bud. The message is that flaws come with beauty, so the friend should stop grieving over what he has done.
Having offered those comparisons, the speaker admits that he too is at fault. Everyone errs, he says, and his own error lies in this very act of comparison, which authorises the other's trespass. He corrupts himself by soothing the wrong, excusing the friend's sins beyond what the sins themselves deserve. The poem thus critiques the method of its opening lines, an unusually self-aware move.
The third quatrain switches into courtroom language. To the friend's sensual fault the speaker brings reason, so that the opposing party ends up acting as advocate, and he begins a lawful plea against himself. The phrase civil war captures the split between love and hate inside him. The couplet names the result: "That I an accessary needs must be, / To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me." The victim has become an accomplice to his own robbery.
Poems this intimate have fed centuries of guessing. Because so few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, speculation has ranged over his appearance, sexuality and religious beliefs, and fringe theories even question whether he wrote the works credited to him. His reputation is untroubled by the puzzle: the plays exist in every major tongue still spoken and are staged more often than those of any other playwright.
Source: Sonnet 35: No more be griev'd at that which thou hast done
