‘The Passionate Pilgrim’ – “ If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love?” (Berowne's sonnet to Rosalind in ‘Love's Labour's Lost’)

‘The Passionate Pilgrim’ – “ If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love?” (Berowne's sonnet to Rosalind in ‘Love's Labour's Lost’)

The character of Berowne who writes and speaks this sonnet is an interesting character who deserves some preface before we look at this poem. Although Berowne is the second in command to the King in the play ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’, he drives much of the action in the play. He acts like a Chorus in the play commenting on the naivety of his fellow oath takers. He believes in the power of instinct as well as the mind. Berowne does not think that a man will find the answer to life solely in a book. He is Shakespeare's double, the reflective glance that Shakespeare catches in the mirror of his words. It is serendity that Berowne falls in love with a woman who is his verbal gymnastic match – Rosaline. In the play, his love poem is revealed and read just after he has berated the King for his hypocrisy. But when Jacquenetta delivers Berowne’s love letter to Rosaline to the King, the hypocrite-accuser is shown to be the biggest hypocrite of all.

In this sonnet, the poet starts with a conundrum which is made ironic by the clever elastic use of the word “swear”. He carries this notion of elasticity further when he says that thoughts such as “faith”, forswearing and “oaths”, though seeming as immovable as an oak to the poet, become like osier willow bows (which are pliable enough to be used to weave baskets) in the hands of his love.

The poet then uses a run-on line into the second quartet where he plays with the meaning of bias as both inclination and the weighting used in a bowl. This serves to emphasise the notion that he believes that there is much to learn about love in the eyes of his Rosaline. He claims that if knowledge is all that is to be attained then, “…to know thee shall suffice.” He then praises Rosaline’s verbal skills and the way she “commends” herself.

In the third quartet the poet leaves the constraints of contemplation for proclamations of praise declaring, “All ignorant that soul that sees thee without wonder…” Then, unusual for the self-assured Berowne, he retreats into a type of humility seeing himself as deserving some credit for him being able to (or allowed to) admire “thy parts”. He then uses hyperbolic metaphors to compare his love’s eyes to Jove’s lighting and her voice to his thunder which the poet ironically sees and hears as “music and sweet fire”. It could be argued that this point the poet has arrived at a higher stage of his spiritual journey understanding the transformational nature of love.

The final rhyming couplet is almost apologetic for the earthly inarticulateness of his praise for his love who he sees as celestial or heavenly. This apology serves to lift the simple humility of the verse to heavenly heights.

“Celestial as thou art, O do not love that wrong,

To sing heaven’s praise with such an earthly tongue.”