Sonnet 83

Sonnet 83 is one of 154 sonnets written by William Shakespeare. It is part of the collection known as the Fair Youth sequence, in which the speaker addresses a young man of great beauty and explores themes of love, beauty, time, and mortality.

In Sonnet 83, the speaker argues that he has deliberately refrained from praising the young man's beauty, implying that the youth's beauty is so transcendent that it defies adequate description. The speaker suggests that to praise it would be to diminish it, or to imply that it needs embellishment. Instead, he leaves the youth's beauty unpainted and unadorned by his words.

The sonnet explores the relationship between beauty and art, and the limitations of language to capture true beauty. The speaker claims that by remaining silent, he has allowed the youth's beauty to speak for itself, suggesting that the youth's inherent loveliness needs no external validation or artistic representation. However, the sonnet also carries an undercurrent of defensiveness. The speaker may be suggesting that he is incapable of adequately praising the youth, masking a potential inadequacy in his poetic skill as a deliberate artistic choice. It also sets the stage for other poets mentioned later in the sequence who are, in the speaker's view, falsely and excessively praising the youth.