Sonnet 74: But Be Contented When That Fell Arrest

SONNETCAST – William Shakespeare's Sonnets Recited, Revealed, Relived

Sonnet 74 continues the argument from Sonnet 73, and now reflects on what will happen when I, the poet, William Shakespeare, am dead. My body will be buried and return to earth, but my spirit will live on in this poetry that I write for you, the young man, which is why the loss you experience at my death will be insignificant: it only entails my passing physical presence, not my essence. In this, the poem proves prophetic not only in relation to the young lover, but also in relation to the world as a whole, since we still very much possess the spirit of William Shakespeare in his writing, and it also flatly contradicts his own pronouncements made in the pair just preceding this one, Sonnets 71 & 72, in which he – somewhat disingenuously we thought then – presented his poetry as something that is supposed to be 'nothing worth'.