Shakespeare Portal

A Lover's Complaint

Genre
Poem
Written
1603–1604
Setting
A riverside in the country
Difficulty
4 / 5

Synopsis

Printed in 1609 as the pendant to Shake-speares Sonnets, this 330-line poem belongs to the Elizabethan 'complaint' tradition. A narrator by a river overhears a 'fickle maid' — weeping and tearing up love-tokens — pour out the story of her seduction: a beautiful, persuasive young man courted her with practised eloquence and false tears, won her, and abandoned her. The poem's sting is in its close: she confesses that, knowing all his falseness, she would yield to his arts all over again. Written in rhyme royal (ababbcc), it shadows the Sonnets' themes of beauty, persuasion, and betrayal. Once doubted, its attribution to Shakespeare is now generally accepted.

Read

  1. A Lover's Complaint

    A fickle maid, overheard by a riverside narrator, tells how a beautiful young man seduced and forsook her — and admits she would fall again.

    1. Part 1 — Lines 1–112
    2. Part 2 — Lines 113–224
    3. Part 3 — Lines 225–330

Characters

  • The maid protagonist

    The 'fickle maid full pale' whose lament the poem records: a young woman seduced and abandoned, who confesses she would yield again.

  • The young man major

    The beautiful, eloquent seducer whose practised rhetoric and false tears won the maid; described entirely through her account.

  • The reverend man minor

    An old herdsman by the river to whom the maid tells her story; with the unnamed first-person narrator, he frames the complaint.

Cross-references