A Lover's Complaint is a narrative poem usually attributed to William Shakespeare, although the poem's authorship is a matter of critical debate.
The poem consists of forty-seven seven-line stanzas written in the rhyme royal (with the rhyme scheme ababbcc), a metre and structure identical to that of Shakespeare's poem The Rape of Lucrece.
In the poem, the speaker sees a young woman weeping at the edge of a river, into which she throws torn-up let...
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A Lover's Complaint is a narrative poem usually attributed to William Shakespeare, although the poem's authorship is a matter of critical debate.
The poem consists of forty-seven seven-line stanzas written in the rhyme royal (with the rhyme scheme ababbcc), a metre and structure identical to that of Shakespeare's poem The Rape of Lucrece.
In the poem, the speaker sees a young woman weeping at the edge of a river, into which she throws torn-up letters, rings, and other tokens of love. An old man asks the reason for her sorrow, and she responds by telling him of a former lover who pursued, seduced, and finally abandoned her. She concludes her story by conceding that she would fall for the young man's false charms again:
The poem, as 'A Lover's Complaint', was originally appended to the first complete edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets, which was published by Thomas Thorpe in 1609. However, critics have often doubted attribution to Shakespeare. A Lover's Complaint contains many words and...
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