A Lover’s Complaint

By William Shakespeare

Introduction

Published in 1609 alongside Shakespeare’s Sonnets, A Lover’s Complaint serves as a companion piece that explores the aftermath of love rather than its pursuit. Told through a framed narrative, the poem follows a narrator who encounters a grieving young woman tearing up letters and tokens from a former lover. As she tells her story, we witness the tension between rational understanding and emotional longing: she knows she was deceived, yet she remains drawn to the charm that ruined her.

The poem is written in rhyme royal, a seven-line stanza form associated with medieval complaint poetry. Shakespeare uses this traditional structure to deliver an unusually modern psychological portrait: a woman at once intelligent, self-aware, and heartbreakingly susceptible to the persuasive power of desire.

Full Poem: A Lover’s Complaint (1609)

From off a hill whose concave womb re-worded
A plaintful story from a sistering vale,
My spirits to attend this double voice accorded,
And down I laid to list the sad-tuned tale;
Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale,
Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain,
Storming her world with sorrow’s wind and rain.

Upon her head a platted hive of straw,
Which fortified her visage from the sun,
Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw
The carcass of beauty spent and done:
Time had not scythed all that youth begun,
Nor youth all quit; but, spite of heaven’s fell rage,
Some beauty peep’d through lattice of sear’d age.

Oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne,
Which on it had conceited characters,
Laundering the silken figures in the brine
That season’d woe had pelleted in tears,
And often reading what contents it bears;
As often shrieking undistinguish’d woe,
In clamours of all size, both high and low.

Sometimes her levell’d eyes their carriage ride,
As they did battery to the spheres intend;
Sometime diverted their poor balls are tied
To th’ orbed earth; sometimes they do extend
Their view right on; anon their gazes lend
To every place at once, and, nowhere fix’d,
The mind and sight distractedly commix’d.

Her hair, nor loose nor tied in formal plat,
Proclaim’d in her a careless hand of pride;
For some untuck’d descended her sheaved hat,
Hanging her pale and pined cheek beside;
Some in her threaden fillet still did bide,
And true to bondage would not break from thence,
Though slackly braided in loose negligence.

A thousand favours from a maund she drew
Of amber, crystal, and of beaded jet,
Which one by one she in a river threw,
Upon whose weeping margent she was set;
Like usury, applying wet to wet,
Or monarch’s hands that lets not bounty fall
Where want cries some, but where excess begs all.

Of folded schedules had she many a one,
Which she perused, sigh’d, tore, and gave the flood;
Crack’d many a ring of posied gold and bone
Bidding them find their sepulchres in mud;
Found yet more letters sadly penn’d in blood,
With sleided silk feat and affectedly
Enswath’d and seal’d to curious secrecy.

These often bath’d she in her fluxive eyes,
And often kiss’d, and often ’gan to tear:
Craving the ruin with a conscience wise,
And by their own annoy did set her clear;
But when her grief was thaw’d with falls of care,
These relics with obsequious majesty
Shone like the victim’s immolated high.

Upon this paper she did settle eye,
And read it for a guide to her distress;
For though the painter must you see his skill,
To find where grief is, in truth where it lies;
Which was to lead him to the holy bliss
That she who dies with zeal must come to kiss,
But now her grief was thaw’d with falls of care.

‘O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies
In the small orb of one particular tear!
But with the inundation of the eyes
What rocky heart to water will not wear?
What breast so cold that is not warmed here?
O cleft effect! cold modesty, hot wrath,
Both fire from hence and chill extincture hath.

‘For lo! his passion, but an art of craft,
Even there resolv’d my reason into tears;
There my white stole of chastity I daff’d,
Shook off my sober guards and civil fears;
Appear to him, as he to me appears,
All melting; though our drops this difference bore,
His poison’d me, and mine did him restore.

‘In him a plenitude of subtle matter,
Applied to cautels, all strange forms receives,
Of burning blushes or of weeping water,
Or swooning paleness; and he takes and leaves,
In either’s aptness as it best deceives,
To blush at speeches rank, to weep at woes,
Or to turn white and swoon at tragic shows.

‘That not a heart which in his level came
Could ’scape the hail of his all-hurting aim,
Showing fair nature is but fair’s excelling;
Whose see of grief was that they nothing knew,
Till now that their spirits almost all forlorn,
Were temper’d with the desire of love new-born.

‘But, O my lover, my sweet love’s sweet face,
O where, O where was my discretion then?
O vanity of sick and wanton sorrow,
My thirsty eyes, my tears, my sighs too late,
Prove that my heart has lost its former state,
And greatness of my woe proves greater still.’

Originally published in the Sonnets (1609) by William Shakespeare. Public domain.

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Analysis

A complex portrait of emotional vulnerability, manipulation, and the enduring pull of desire.

Shakespeare’s Framed Story of Heartbreak

Shakespeare begins with a narrator overhearing a young woman’s grief, creating emotional distance that slowly closes as her story unfolds. This framing device allows readers to see both the outward signs of heartbreak — torn letters, broken rings, restless eyes — and the internal turmoil beneath them. The woman is not a simple victim. She is articulate, perceptive, and painfully aware of her contradictions.

The Lover as a Master of Persuasion

The man she describes is young, handsome, intelligent, and gifted with rhetorical skill. Shakespeare sketches him as someone who understands how to command sympathy and admiration, using vulnerability as a tool. His emotions appear genuine but prove to be carefully crafted performances. His words “did honey passages of love,” transforming desire into something irresistible.

Here, Shakespeare demonstrates his deep understanding of how language can be weaponized. The lover’s greatest power is not beauty or status, but eloquence — the ability to shape reality through speech.

Insight Into Human Contradiction

What makes the poem so powerful is the woman’s honesty about her own lingering attraction. She condemns the lover’s deceit, yet still admires the very qualities that deceived her. This tension between clarity and longing is painfully relatable. Shakespeare portrays how emotional bonds do not vanish simply because one knows they are harmful. Desire often survives the collapse of trust.

A Study of Seduction and Self-Deception

The poem reveals how seduction works as a psychological process:

• The lover studies his audience.
• He presents himself as vulnerable, creating emotional reciprocity.
• His flattery makes the woman feel singular, chosen.
• His remorse appears genuine, softening resistance.

Shakespeare exposes not only manipulation, but the human tendency to believe what we want to believe. The woman recognizes the deception but feels powerless against the emotional memory of being adored.

Why This Poem Matters

Though overshadowed by the Sonnets, A Lover’s Complaint enriches Shakespeare’s exploration of love’s complexity. It offers:

• a rare Shakespearean female monologue,
• a sharp psychological study of persuasion,
• and a candid portrayal of emotional aftermath rather than romantic pursuit.

It stands as one of Shakespeare’s most modern-feeling works, anticipating the dramatic monologues of later poets and offering a timeless exploration of love’s power to wound, transform, and linger.