Sonnet 21 by Shakespeare

Sonnet 21 was written by William Shakespeare. Like Sonnet 130, it addresses the issue of truth in love, as the speaker frankly admits that his lines, while less extravagant than those of other poets, are more truthful.

Paraphrase
I am unlike the other poet, who praises a woman made artificially beautiful by cosmetics, who compares her to the heavens, and indeed to everything beautiful. He proudly compares his beloved to the sun and moon, to the beauties of earth and sea, to the flowers of April. For myself, because my love is true, I wish merely to write truly. My beloved is as beautiful as any human, though not so bright as the stars. Those who like exaggerated rumors may speak more if they wish; since I do not plan to sell my beloved, I will not waste time with superfluous praise.

Source and analysis
George Wyndham calls this the first sonnet to address the problem of the rival poet; Beeching and others, however, differentiate the poet mentioned here from the one later seen competing with Shakespeare's speaker for the affections of a male beloved.

Edmond Malone found parallel descriptions of the stars as candles in Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. While Alexander Schmidt glosses line 13 as "fall in love with what others have praised," Edward Dowden has it "those who like to be buzzed about by talk." As William James Rolfe notes, the line refers definitely to the type of exaggerated praise the sonnet has just described.

George Wyndham notes a parallel to the final line in Samuel Daniel's Delia 53; in that poem, the speaker condemns the "mercenary lines" of other poets. As Madeleine Doran and others note, criticism of exaggerated praise was only slightly less common in Renaissance poetry than such praise itself.

Because of the repeated --are rhymes in the third quatrain, the poem has six rhymes instead of seven.

Interpretations

 * Imogen Stubbs, for the 2002 compilation album, When Love Speaks (EMI Classics)