A Lover's Complaint

Following an established tradition at the time, William Shakespeare furnishes his collection of 154 Sonnets with a poetic Complaint that acts as a coda to the series.

Where he departs from common practice is in his deployment of an elaborate but for this no less effective distancing device that has an unnamed narrator set up the scene for us and then allows us to listen in on a conversation between a young woman and an elderly gentleman, as the woman relates how she long held out against the charms and wiles of a beautiful suitor but ultimately fell for him.

Also highly unconventional and genuinely surprising is the conclusion the young woman comes to at the end of her lament...