Confession as a Form of Social Liberation and Seduction

Abstract

Modern literary commentary has a tendency to dismiss William Shakespeare’s A Lover’s Complaint as a poem not worthy of his pen. However, certain scholars, such as Mac Jackson, Kenneth Muir, and Roger Warren, have brought this poem back into the world of criticism. The female Lover in the poem beguiles with her intriguing confession and shows the naiveté and power of consent and seduction. This narrative poem exemplifies the complexity of female love and how it inescapably leads to a broken heart. The female Lover in the Complaint is seduced, betrayed, and abandoned by her wooer; nonetheless, at the conclusion of her poignant lament, she discloses that, if given a chance, she would do it all over again. This strange contradiction has caused intriguing and rather perplexing interpretations through the centuries. Some critics have claimed that this work does not belong to Shakespeare. That idea probably derived from the long-held belief that Thomas Thorpe did not have Shakespeare’s authorization for publishing the Sonnets and this poem in a 1609 quarto (Bevington 160). Nevertheless this particular edition remains the only valid evidence that it is his poem.