Sonnet 42: Rationalizing RejectionShakespeare's Sonnet 42 is about a man, the speaker, who contemplates the loss of his lover for the benefit of his friend. The speaker explores the motive for her lover's choice of betrayal; most notably, it attempts to explain why this betrayal occurred with a series of different rationalizations. The speaker seems to believe that he would not be as pained by his loss if he had to explain why his lover betrayed him. Shakespeare famously wrote three distinct types of sonnets. The first set consists of Sonnets 1-126 which speak of a young man and often deal with the element of time. Sonnet 42 falls into the “young man” category and this character is present as a friend of the speaker. The introduction to this English sonnet, the first quatrain, has the speaker explain that he is not upset that his friend, the young man character, has his lover; he is rather upset that his lover has the young man. Lines 1 and 3 illustrate this: “That you have her, it is not all my sorrow”, “That she has you, it is my boss who cries. » This rationalization makes it seem like the speaker is unaffected by the young man finding a new love even though he is upset by his loss. However, this is not a convincing argument as the reader can observe in the same quatrain, line 4, when he mourns his loss even more, "A loss in love which touches me more closely." Clearly, the speaker's feelings are not those he expresses in the first three lines, as he ends the quatrain by mentioning how dear the lover's love was to him. The second quatrain of Sonnet 42 begins with the speaker's second and most complex attempt to rationalize the speech. situation while he claims he is not affected by ...... middle of paper ...... with any loss, it is love. The speaker cannot see this connection between loving and losing, and therefore cannot express how he feels about the love and loss of the young man and his lover. The betrayal and rejection between the young man and his lover causes the speaker to overanalyze the situation to a point where he tries to find a happy outcome to avoid future pain. Yet it is never revealed to the reader that the speaker finds true closure. Instead of focusing on loss and love, betrayal and rejection, its main thesis should have been based on loyalty and friendship. With these themes, he could have avoided his attempts at rationalization and discovered that there was no reason to lament because his lover was clearly not truly faithful to him and the young man was not genuine in his friendship . So losing both wouldn't have been such a big loss.