Sonnet 44 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. Sonnet 44 is continued in Sonnet 45.
Sonnet 44 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet, which contains three quatrains followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form, ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, and is written in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The fifth line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:
<pre style="border:none;background-color:transparent;margin-left:1em"> ÃÂ / ÃÂ / ÃÂ / ÃÂ / ÃÂ / No matter then although my foot did stand (44.5) </pre>
The sonnet is quite regular metrically (for example, a three-syllable "injurious" maintains regularity in line two), but implements a few variations, for example in the first and last lines:
<pre style="border:none;background-color:transparent;margin-left:1em"> ÃÂ ÃÂ / / ÃÂ / ÃÂ / ÃÂ / If the dull substance of my flesh were thought, (44.1)
ÃÂ / ÃÂ / / ÃÂ ÃÂ / ÃÂ / But heavy tears, badges of either's woe. (44.14) </pre>
...which contain, respectively, a rightward movement of the first ictus (resulting in a four-position figure, <code>ÃÂ ÃÂ / /</code>, sometimes referred to as a minor ionic), and a mid-line reversal ("badges").
Critics have mentioned Sonnet 44 is directly coupled to Sonnet 45 and lacks a definite conclusion.