Sonnet 42

Shadows and Forgiveness

1 That thou hast her it is not all my grief,
2 And yet it may be said I loved her dearly;
3 That she hath thee is of my wailing chief,
4 A loss in love that touches me more nearly.
5 Loving offenders thus I will excuse ye:
6 Thou dost love her, because thou know'st I love her;
7 And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,
8 Suffering my friend for my sake to approve her.
9 If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain,
10 And losing her, my friend hath found that loss;
11 Both find each other, and I lose both twain,
12 And both for my sake lay on me this cross:
13 But here's the joy; my friend and I are one;
14 Sweet flattery! then she loves but me alone.

Notes

TLN 577archaic vocab
“she hath thee is of my wailing chief”
'Wailing' means lamenting; 'chief' is used here as a noun meaning 'the chief cause' or 'the greatest source.' The line means: 'that she possesses you is the primary source of my grief.' The loss of the Youth to the mistress hurts the speaker more than the loss of the mistress to the Youth.
TLN 581archaic vocab
“for my sake even so doth she abuse me, / Suffering my friend”
'Abuse' here means to wrong, injure, or deceive — not merely to misuse. The speaker's logic is that the mistress wrongs him specifically 'for his sake,' because she allows the friend to court and win her. 'Suffering' means 'permitting' or 'allowing,' not enduring pain.
TLN 582archaic vocab
“my friend for my sake to approve her”
'Approve' means to test, demonstrate, or prove the worth of someone — not simply to express liking. The friend 'approves' the mistress in the sense of putting her through a trial that establishes her quality. The word carries a quasi-legal flavor: to approve a claim was to validate it by demonstration.
TLN 587rhetorical device
“my friend and I are one; / Sweet flattery”
The couplet is the sonnet's volta — the turn where the argument closes but also collapses. The speaker reasons: because a true friend and I are one soul, the mistress who loves my friend actually loves only me. Then he names his own reasoning 'Sweet flattery' — pleasant self-deception — admitting it is false comfort. The argument rests on the classical ideal that perfect friendship fuses two people into one.
historical Renaissance friendship and the friend-versus-love idealhistorical The sonnet form