A Lover's Complaint

By William Shakespeare

"A Lover's Complaint" is a narrative poem written by William Shakespeare, and published as part of the 1609 quarto of Shakespeare's Sonnets. It was published by Thomas Thorpe. "A Lover’s Complaint" is an example of the female-voiced complaint, that is frequently appended to sonnet sequences. Other examples include Samuel Daniel's "Complaint to Rosamund", which follows Daniel's Delia (1592), Thomas Lodge's "Complaint of Elstred", which follows Phillis (1593), Michael Drayton's "Matilda the Faire", which follows Ideas Mirrour (1594), and Richard Barnfield's "Cassandra", which follows The Affectionate Shepherd.

William Shakespeare (26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. They also continue to be studied and reinterpreted.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Passerino
• Release date: Jun 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9791220811873

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was born in April 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, on England’s Avon River. When he was eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway. The couple had three children—an older daughter Susanna and twins, Judith and Hamnet. Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, died in childhood. The bulk of Shakespeare’s working life was spent in the theater world of London, where he established himself professionally by the early 1590s. He enjoyed success not only as a playwright and poet, but also as an actor and shareholder in an acting company. Although some think that sometime between 1610 and 1613 Shakespeare retired from the theater and returned home to Stratford, where he died in 1616, others believe that he may have continued to work in London until close to his death.

Book preview

2021

A Lover's Complaint

From off a hill whose concave womb reworded

A plaintful story from a sist’ring vale,

My spirits t’attend this double voice accorded,

And down I laid to list the sad-tun’d tale;

Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale,

Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain,

Storming her world with sorrow’s wind and rain.

Upon her head a platted hive of straw,

Which fortified her visage from the sun,

Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw

The carcass of a beauty spent and done;

Time had not scythed all that youth begun,

Nor youth all quit, but spite of heaven’s fell rage

Some beauty peeped through lattice of sear’d age.

Oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne,

Which on it had conceited characters,

Laund’ring the