Sonnet 99 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. The sonnet is generally grouped with the preceding two in the sequence, with which it shares a dominant trope and image set: the beloved is described in terms of, and judged superior to, nature and its beauties.

Paraphrase

I criticized the violet

Violet (plant)

Viola is a genus of flowering plants in the violet family Violaceae, with around 400–500 species distributed around the world. Most species are found in the temperate Northern Hemisphere; however, viola species are also found in widely divergent areas such as Hawaii, Australasia, and the Andes in...

, telling it that it had stolen its sweet smell from my beloved's breath, and its purple color from my beloved's veins. I told the lily it had stolen the whiteness of your (that is, the beloved's) hands, and marjoram

Marjoram

Marjoram is a somewhat cold-sensitive perennial herb or undershrub with sweet pine and citrus flavours...

 had stolen the beloved's hair; a third flower had stolen from both; in fact, all flowers had stolen something from the person of the beloved.

Source and analysis

Edward Massey and others asserted that the poem was directly inspired by a poem in Henry Constable

Henry Constable

Henry Constable was an English poet, son of Sir Robert Constable. He went to St John's College, Cambridge, where he took his degree in 1580. Becoming a Roman Catholic, he went to Paris, and acted as anagent for the Catholic powers. He died at Liège...

's Diana (1592); T. W. Baldwin rejected this claim while noting that the same Constable sonnet had inspired a passage in The Rape of Lucrece

The Rape of Lucrece

The Rape of Lucrece is a narrative poem by William Shakespeare about the legendary Lucretia. In his previous narrative poem, Venus and Adonis , Shakespeare had included a dedicatory letter to his patron, the Earl of Southampton, in which he promised to write a "graver work"...

. At any rate, the conceit is common, and parallels have been found in the poems by Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...

, Thomas Campion

Thomas Campion

Thomas Campion was an English composer, poet and physician. He wrote over a hundred lute songs; masques for dancing, and an authoritative technical treatise on music.-Life:...

, and others. George Wilson praised the poem as an example of synesthesia

Synesthesia

Synesthesia , from the ancient Greek , "together," and , "sensation," is a neurologically based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway...

.

The sonnet has attracted some attention as one of those that appears to provide clues about the historical identity of Shakespeare's subject (on the traditional assumption that the poems are in some sense autobiographical). In 1904, C. C. Stopes noted the existence of a portrait of Southampton

Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton

Henry Wriothesley , 3rd Earl of Southampton , was the second son of Henry Wriothesley, 2nd Earl of Southampton, and his wife Mary Browne, Countess of Southampton, daughter of the 1st Viscount Montagu...

 at Welbeck Abbey

Welbeck Abbey

Welbeck Abbey near Clumber Park in North Nottinghamshire was the principal abbey of the Premonstratensian order in England and later the principal residence of the Dukes of Portland.-Monastic period:...

 in which his hair curls in a manner similar to young marjoram. This analysis has been disputed by scholars who assert that smell, rather than appearance, is the primary referent of Shakespeare's line. Because of the extravagant praise of the beloved's body, some Victorian scholars were reluctant to believe that the poem was addressed to a man; current consensus, however, groups it with the other poems written to the young man.

The sonnet has 15 lines, and is the only poem in the sequence with more than fourteen (126

Sonnet 126

Sonnet 126 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's the final member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet shows how Time and nature coincide....

 has 12). Sonnet structure was not fixed during the period, and Sidney Lee adduces many examples of fifteen line sonnets. An extra line is particularly common in linked sonnets, and this sonnet is linked to 98

Sonnet 98

Sonnet 98 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the persona expresses his love towards a young man...

; Malone

Edmond Malone

Edmond Malone was an Irish Shakespearean scholar and editor of the works of William Shakespeare.Assured of an income after the death of his father in 1774, Malone was able to give up his law practice for at first political and then more congenial literary pursuits. He went to London, where he...

 ended 98 with a colon to demonstrate the connection. However, other scholars have remarked on the clumsiness of the first line and suggested that the quarto

Quarto

Quarto could refer to:* Quarto, a size or format of a book in which four leaves of a book are created from a standard size sheet of paper* For specific information about quarto texts of William Shakespeare's works, see:...

text represents an unrevised draft that found its way into print.