Sonnet 70: That Thou Are Blamed Shall Not Be Thy Defect

SONNETCAST – William Shakespeare's Sonnets Recited, Revealed, Relived

With Sonnet 70, William Shakespeare once more performs the poetic equivalent of a handbrake turn and swivels what we thought we could understand from Sonnet 69 around 180 degrees to race headlong in the opposite direction. The charge levied against his young lover – that with his conduct he has been allowing himself to become 'common' and thus acquire a reputation way beneath his supposedly exalted status – is here lifted, and any such insinuation summarily dismissed as slander, prompting us primarily to wonder: why? What is causing the accusations against the young man in the first place and what then brings about this virtuoso ventriloquy?