Sonnet 67: Ah, Wherefore With Infection Should He Live

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

Sonnet 67 picks up on the deeply dissatisfied mood of Sonnet 66 and develops the theme of a world that has lost its way right through Sonnet 68. On the surface, Sonnets 67 & 68 concern themselves entirely with the then new fashion – much scorned by Shakespeare – for heavy make-up and big wigs and their wearers' futile endeavours to endow themselves with a fake and therefore ghastly pseudo-beauty that stands in such stark contrast to his young lover's natural and therefore genuine beauty. But Sonnet 67 also – and unlike Sonnet 68 – employs several layered phrases and some obvious as well as some more dubious double meanings that may hint at an underlying unease about the young man's conduct or the state of his reputation. This, while at best subtly suggested in Sonnet 67, will become the direct subject of Sonnets 69 & 70 and once again far more forcefully in Sonnets 94, 95, and 96.