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"... for restful death I cry". I've never really understood if this sort of direct reference to suicidal ideation was a shock to Elizabethan sensibilities. Would people have intepreted it as a non-literal, poetic sort of longing or would people really have thought the author was one breakup away from killing himself? I'm just very unfamiliar with how that sort of thing would be treated at that time. Any help appreciated. Boris B08:37, 19 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
For some reason I've never thought of this sonnet as refering to suicide... it always appeared to me as a call for death, of course, but I never understood it to be necessarily suicidal. As to how Elizabethan society would've received this, I can't say for sure, but you can pick up much of the same sentiments in Hamlet "To be or not to be", "O how stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me the uses of this world", "O that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew!"... and don't forget about R&J in which the title characters do kill themselves. So, I can't imagine that suicide wasn't so taboo that it was forbidden in conversation and art, but I would imagine that it was considered a dishonorable way to die and a black mark on the family name. AdamBiswanger118:55, 19 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
