title: Sonnet 132
text: # Sonnet 132
  
  Sonnet 132 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare.
  
  ## Structure
  
  Sonnet 132 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form abab cdcd efef gg and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The 3rd line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:
  
      / = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus.
  
  Line 13 features a mid-line reversal and, potentially, an initial reversal:
  
  Lines 2, 4, and 6 also exhibit initial reversals. Line 6 may be scanned as exhibiting a mid-line reversal; such a reversal is normally preceded by at least a slight intonational break, which "grey cheeks" does not allow. Peter Groves calls this a "harsh mapping", and recommends that in performance "the best thing to do is to prolong the subordinated S-syllable [here, "grey"] ... the effect of this is to throw a degree of emphasis on it".
  
  Some rhythmic uncertainty at the beginning of lines 7 and 9 may be resolved by applying contrastive accent to line 7's "that" and line 9's "those", rendering both lines regular and foregrounding a characteristically Shakespearean antithetical construction.
  
  The meter demands that line 1's "pitying" function as two syllables. Regarding lines 5 and 7's rhymes "heaven" and "even", Booth regards them as monosyllabic, whereas Kerrigan evidently reads them as disyllabic.
  
  ## Interpretations
  
  * Matthew Rhys, for the 2002 compilation album, When Love Speaks (EMI Classics)
  