Shakespeare’s Sonnet 91 puts a unique spin on the traditional Shakespearean

love sonnets by having the speaker express how wonderful it feels to be in love.
Rather than describing his beloved beauty, the speaker in this sonnet uses the term
love as an analogy and compares it to wealth and aristocratic status. After comparing
love to immaculate wealth and aristocratic status, the speaker uses love as a metaphor
to argue that having the ability to feel love is priceless.  Ultimately, he argues that
feeling love is more powerful than the luck of high birth or having a unique skill. In
other words, the speaker is arguing that love is not a birthright or possession – it is
something more profound. Throughout the sonnet it is clear that the speaker believes
he has something so profound it supersedes the elite. However, the last two couplets
express the speaker’s fear of losing his power by the use of imagery which gives the
reader a glimpse of seeing him as a broken man. He concedes that if he loses the
ability to feel love he will be just an ordinary man — one who is hopelessly lost
without love.
Hidden beneath the cryptic language of this sonnet lies a conflict between high
birth, wealth, pride, and love. Love in this instance seems to be the most powerful
term in the sonnet. The speaker seems to pit high birth, wealth, and pride against one
another. He uses love to express something that is more profound and implies that he
sees high birth, wealth, and pride as a physical possession and therefore powerless.
Upon reflection, one could argue that another main metaphor for love is power as the
speaker expresses that he has something that those with immaculate wealth do not.
The way in which love is placed above high birth signifies that love is placed above
one’s social status, pride, and wealth. The speaker mocks those who are privileged by
implying that the feeling of love gives him more pride and wealth than could be
imagined. Ultimately, this power allows for an additional conflict between love and
the speaker. The sonnet’s conclusion implies that the speaker is aware of the
possibility that he can lose the power of feeling love. In the last two couplets, the
speaker acknowledges his fear of losing his unique ability, and implies that extreme
wealth and privilege cannot substitute for the power of love.
The poem’s form is that of a conventional Elizabethan sonnet. Each of its
fourteen lines contains ten syllables. The poem consists of three distinct quatrains; the
first two are complete sentences, and the third is directly linked to the concluding
couplet. The extensive repetition of “some” (seven times in four lines) stresses the
idea which will be refuted by the following two quatrains and couplet. The anaphora
also seems to debase those who are primarily interested in things other than love. This
attitude produces a certain irony in the poem’s shift to the singular in the second and
third quatrains, where an image of superiority is produced. The narrator, who seems to
be deriding those who care so much for items and ideas which cannot reciprocate their
affection, actually appears pompous by placing himself above the others.
I have chosen this sonnet because I felt that it differs from others. Unlike
traditional love sonnets, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 91 expresses how powerful the feeling
of love is, and how it brings someone true happiness. By comparing social status,
wealth, and skill, this sonnet reveals that love is more profound and is not obtained by
one’s good fortune or social status. However, true love is fragile, as is mentioned in
the last lines.