Sonnet 90 argues that if the young man is going to leave, he should do it now, while the speaker is already suffering, because losing him first would make his other misfortunes seem small by comparison.
Sonnet 90: Full Poem
Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now,
Now while the world is bent my deeds to cross,
Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,
And do not drop in for an after-loss:
Ah do not, when my heart hath ’scap’d this sorrow,
Come in the rearward of a conquer’d woe;
Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,
To linger out a purpos’d overthrow.
If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,
When other petty griefs have done their spite,
But in the onset come: so shall I taste
At first the very worst of fortune’s might;
And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,
Compar’d with loss of thee will not seem so.
Text from the 1609 Quarto, with spelling and punctuation lightly modernized.
At a Glance
Here are the key facts about Sonnet 90 for quick reference.
What Sonnet 90 Means
Sonnet 90 follows directly from Sonnet 89, which ends with the speaker refusing to love anyone the young man hates. Sonnet 90 picks up that word in its first line: “Then hate me when thou wilt.” If hatred is coming, the speaker asks for it now.
The first quatrain explains why now. The world is currently set on thwarting everything the speaker does, and fortune is already spiteful. The speaker asks the young man to join in and finish the job, to “make me bow,” instead of arriving later as an extra loss once the other troubles have passed.
The second quatrain repeats the plea in images. When the speaker’s heart has escaped its present sorrow, the young man should not “Come in the rearward of a conquer’d woe,” like a rear guard attacking after the battle seems won. He should not give “a windy night a rainy morrow,” dragging out a defeat that is already planned.
The third quatrain states the request plainly. If the young man will leave, he should not leave last, after the “petty griefs” have done their worst. He should come “in the onset,” at the start of the attack, so the speaker tastes the worst of fortune’s power at once. The couplet gives the reason. Compared with losing the young man, the other “strains of woe” that seem painful now will not seem like woe at all.
Sonnet 90 Line by Line
Each line, with the sense of it in plain English.
Themes
Sonnet 90 is a poem of strategy in suffering: the speaker cannot prevent the loss, so he tries to control its timing.
Choosing the Order of Pain
The speaker accepts that he may lose the young man and asks only that the loss come first. His reasoning is psychological. A large grief that arrives after smaller ones prolongs suffering, while a large grief that arrives first makes the smaller ones seem trivial. The poem treats pain as something that can be arranged, and the arranging gives the speaker a small measure of control in a situation where he has little else.
Fortune and the Hostile World
The young man’s possible desertion is set against a background of general misfortune. “The world is bent my deeds to cross,” and fortune has “spite” and “might.” The poem never says what these troubles are, and readers should be cautious about assigning them to events in Shakespeare’s life. The pairing recalls Sonnet 29, where the speaker is “in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes” until he thinks of the young man. In Sonnet 90, the young man is no longer the remedy for fortune’s blows but potentially the worst of them.
The Beloved as the Measure of Loss
The couplet makes the young man the standard by which other griefs are measured. This is a dark version of the praise found elsewhere in the sequence. In Sonnet 91, which follows, the young man’s love is worth more than birth, wealth, and fine clothes. Here, the loss of that love outweighs the rest. The value of the beloved is proved by how much his absence would hurt.
Form and Language
Sonnet 90 is written as a series of commands and prohibitions, and much of its imagery comes from warfare and weather.
Meter and Rhyme
The poem follows the regular Shakespearean pattern of three quatrains and a couplet in iambic pentameter. Lines 5 and 7 end on “sorrow” and “morrow,” a feminine rhyme with an extra unstressed syllable that gives the second quatrain a falling, sighing sound. “Last” and “taste” in the third quatrain make a slant rhyme. The word “woe” ends both line 6 and line 13, so the poem’s key word for grief returns at its close, where the couplet rhymes it with “so.”
Military Language
The poem borrows heavily from the vocabulary of battle. The young man is asked to “Join with” fortune as an ally, to “make me bow” like a defeated enemy, and to avoid coming “in the rearward,” the rear guard of an army, after a “conquer’d woe.” Line 8 speaks of a “purpos’d overthrow,” and line 11 asks him to come “in the onset,” the opening charge. Shakespeare uses “rearward” in a similar way in Romeo and Juliet, where Juliet says that “with a rearward following Tybalt’s death,” the news “‘Romeo is banished'” arrived as a second and greater blow. The military language makes the young man’s desertion an attack the speaker expects to lose.
“A Windy Night a Rainy Morrow”
Line 7 is a compact weather image. A windy night is bad enough; a rainy morning after it prolongs the misery when the speaker hoped for relief. The image has the ring of a proverb and is one of the more memorable lines in the poem. It also explains the logic of the whole sonnet, since the speaker’s fear is less about the loss itself than about its coming too late, when he thinks the storm has passed.
Repetition and Urgency
The opening line ends with “now,” and line 2 begins with it, a repetition that presses the request. Negative commands follow in quick succession: “do not drop in,” “do not, when,” “Give not,” and “do not leave me last.” The speaker’s sentences pile up instructions, which gives the poem the sound of someone trying to negotiate a disaster before it arrives.
A Closer Reading
Sonnet 90 sounds like a plea for mercy, but it is really an act of self-protection, and its consolation is bleaker than it first appears.
The opening line is startling because it seems to invite cruelty. “Then hate me when thou wilt” accepts the young man’s hatred as his right; “if ever, now” asks him to exercise it quickly. The tone is not defiant. The speaker is not daring the young man to leave. He is trying to make an unbearable event bearable by deciding when it happens, and the only way he can influence the timing is to ask for it.
The war imagery reveals how the speaker imagines the young man. A lover who comes “in the rearward of a conquer’d woe” is an enemy soldier, and a “purpos’d overthrow” is a defeat planned in advance. The word “purpos’d” is especially telling. The speaker assumes the young man has already decided to leave and is only choosing his moment. The poem asks him to stop choosing and act.
The couplet offers comfort, but the comfort is strange. Other griefs “which now seem woe” will “not seem so” once the speaker has lost the young man. This is not a promise that the speaker will feel better. It is a promise that he will feel so much worse that ordinary troubles will lose their sting. The poem finds relief only in a larger pain, which says a good deal about how completely the speaker’s happiness depends on the young man.
The poem’s place in the sequence sharpens this. Sonnet 89 promised to cooperate with the young man’s departure; Sonnet 90 asks him to hurry. The next poem, Sonnet 91, ranks the young man’s love above birth, wealth, and fine clothes and ends with the fear that he “mayst take / All this away.” Read together, the three poems trace a mind circling the same loss from different angles: submission, urgency, and finally a boast that cannot quite shake its dread.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about Sonnet 90, answered briefly.
Who Is Sonnet 90 Addressed To?
The young man of the Fair Youth sonnets. Sonnets 1 to 126 are generally read as addressed to him, and this poem follows the group of sonnets about his possible withdrawal of love.
Why Does the Speaker Want to Be Hated Now?
Because he is already suffering. If the young man leaves now, the worst grief will come first, and the speaker’s other troubles will seem small beside it. If he leaves later, it will prolong the pain.
What Does “Rearward of a Conquer’d Woe” Mean?
The rearward was the rear guard of an army. The speaker asks the young man not to attack from behind after he has overcome his present grief, bringing a fresh loss just when he thought the danger had passed.
How Is Sonnet 90 Connected to Sonnet 89?
Sonnet 89 ends with “him whom thou dost hate,” and Sonnet 90 begins “Then hate me when thou wilt.” The second poem picks up the word and continues the thought, asking the young man to act on that hatred quickly.
Where Is the Volta in Sonnet 90?
The turn is mild and comes at line 13. The first twelve lines plead with the young man to leave now if he will leave at all, and the couplet gives the consolation: other griefs will not seem like grief compared with losing him.
Related Sonnets
Three sonnets share this poem’s fear of loss and its sense of a hostile fortune.