Sonnet 30

Throughout “Sonnet 30,” Shakespeare utilizes a quasi-legal tone in order to provide an atmosphere of discontent and conflict, which is characterized by words that imitate a trial setting. We are shown this parallel in the first couplet, when the speaker, in a “session of sweet silent thought (1), summons up a “remembrance of things past” (2). This creates an image of a court session, where the judge is the speaker who is in quiet pondering and the defendant is the memory that he has of his past. This sets up the main conflict of the sonnet, which is the judging of his memories as either guilty or innocent; those of despair or happiness.

            In the second couplet, the speaker makes a “sigh” (3) at the “lack of many a thing [he]   sought” (3), demonstrating dissatisfaction at the defendant and his sadness over not having been able to live his life to the fullest. This interpretation is fortified with the proceeding line, as he gives a “new wail” (4) to the “old woe” (4) of “dear time’s waste” (4), which demonstrates his regret at wasting the precious time of his past. The third and fourth couplets give insight into what it is that he regrets over, expressed as he drowns “an eye, unused to flow / For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night” (5-6). This shows that his regret is over his friends, whose deaths have him in overwhelming sadness. The scars of that pain are reopened as he begins to “weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe” (7), causing him to mourn the “expense of many a vanish’d sight” (8), which now demonstrates his regret over what he’d lost rather than what he was unable to gain.

            The fifth and sixth couplets provide an assessment of the evidence that has been brought forth, which have been nothing but regret and sadness. The speaker relives his pain as he grieves “at grievances forgone” (9), going from “woe to woe” (10) as he self-pityingly reminiscences about the “sad account” (11) of his past. He is now convinced that there is nothing but despair in his memories, thus finalizing the verdict. The result is that he newly pays “as if not paid before” (12) the cost of his guilty memories, which is a punishment that is as fresh as if it had just been inflicted to him. The final couplet, however, offers a glimmer of hope for this guilt. As the speaker thinks of his “dear friend” (13), the “losses” (13) that had caused his suffering are “restored” (14) and the “sorrows” (14) that accompanied them absolved. Though fleeting, this happiness is his true salvation.

            Shakespeare describes, in this sonnet, a conflict of judgement over the memories of the speaker, written in a way as to suggest a court setting. In this trial, the pieces of evidence presented all point towards a guilty verdict, labelling the speaker’s memories as those of sadness and despair. The resulting sentence is that the speaker has to live on with his regretful memories, which he now believes to be full of losses and woes. However, his final yet brief salvation lies in thinking of his dear friend, who is the embodiment of all that he had lost and who ends his suffering. This sonnet conveys the sadness and regret that the speaker felt, at the same time lending the insight that life must go on and that there is precious worth in the past, as despairing as it may be.