Sonnet 71

The speaker, anticipating his death, begs his beloved not to mourn him lest public scrutiny damage the beloved's reputation.

Original

Modern

1 No longer mourn for me when I am dead,

Don't mourn me when I'm dead,

2 Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell

Than what the grim funeral bell will tell,

The 'surly sullen bell' tolls to announce a death to the parish.

3 Give warning to the world that I am fled

Announcing to the world that I have fled,

4 From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:

From this corrupt world to dwell with base worms:

'Vile' and 'vilest' emphasize the speaker's disgust with life itself.

5 Nay if you read this line, remember not,

No, if you read these words, don't remember,

6 The hand that writ it, for I love you so,

The hand that wrote it, for love's sake,

7 That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,

For I am ashamed by the love I produce,

8 If thinking on me then should make you woe.

And so should you, for loving something so worthless.

Volta The addressee's perspective shifts; instead of the speaker telling the beloved to forget, he worries about what the beloved might read or remember.

9 O if, I say, you look upon this verse,

Yet if you must love me, then after I die,

10 When I (perhaps) compounded am with clay,

Forget me in the torture of this harsh world,

'Compounded...with clay' = decomposed, mixed into the earth.

11 Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;

All worthy people, distance yourselves from hence,

12 But let your love even with my life decay.

Then you should not have known me so well—

13 Lest the wise world should look into your moan,

But this I beg, let it be granted,

'Look into' = scrutinize, investigate with judgmental intent.

14 And mock you with me after I am gone.

You not be jealous of my being loved,

The Paradox of Forgetfulness as Love

Sonnet 71 weaponizes erasure as devotion. The speaker's insistence that the beloved forget him is not selflessness but a complex negotiation: by asking to be forgotten, he positions himself as the one protecting the beloved. He trades his own presence for the beloved's reputation. This is emotionally manipulative—the very act of writing and publishing these lines ensures he cannot truly be forgotten. The sonnet becomes a guarantee of remembrance disguised as a plea for oblivion, turning absence into immortality.

Social Shame and Unworthiness

The sonnet's urgency derives from Elizabethan social anxieties. To be mourned by a beloved for a 'vile' or unworthy person was to invite gossip and public contempt. The speaker acknowledges his own baseness—he's not worth the beloved's grief. Yet by articulating this fear so vividly, he paradoxically insists on his significance: only someone who matters enough to wound the beloved's reputation merits this elaborate strategy of self-abnegation. The poem's dramatic extremity reveals the speaker's desperate need to be consequential.

If this happened today

Imagine a partner leaving explicit instructions in their will: 'Don't talk about me after I'm gone.' It reads as self-sacrifice but conceals deep insecurity—worry that being associated with them might hurt the other person socially or professionally. The speaker is simultaneously erasing himself and making his erasure the centerpiece of his love.

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