Sonnet 62: Sin of Self-Love Possesseth All Mine Eye

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

With his most unsparing sonnet so far, Sonnet 62, William Shakespeare finds yet another register and a new level of depth to both his insight into self and the honesty with which he is prepared to sonneteer his young lover. That his lover is young and he by his own perception and standards old could scarcely be more drastically emphasised than in this depiction of himself as misguidedly narcissistic. The greater therefore the redeeming twist that comes in the concluding couplet which once more emphasises not just the close connection Shakespeare feels to his young lover but reiterates, as other sonnets have done before, that he and the young man are, as far as William Shakespeare is concerned, one.