When to the Sessions of Sweet Silent Thought is the opening line of Sonnet 30 by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. Shakespeare ranks as the greatest playwright in the English language. He is also widely admired for his poetry. See Shakespeare, William.
The sonnets were printed in 1609, when Shakespeare’s plays had already achieved great popularity. Shakespeare had written the verses over a number of years, and the date of composition for each verse is unknown. The sequence consists of 154 sonnets. Some literary scholars believe that a different author wrote Sonnets 153 and 154, those focused on Cupid, the Roman god of love. Only two of the sonnets were published earlier, in a book of 20 poems entitled The Passionate Pilgrim (1599).
Like almost all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, Sonnet 30 consists of three quatrains (four-line units) followed by a concluding couplet (two-line unit). Each quatrain has a rhyme scheme of abab, cdcd, efef, with the final couplet a rhyming one (gg).
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste; Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night, And weep afresh love’s long since cancelled woe, And moan th’expense of many a vanished sight; Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, Which I new pay as if not paid before. But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restored and sorrows end.
Sonnet 30 is similar in theme to the previous sonnet in the sequence, Sonnet 29, “When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes” (see When, in Disgrace with Fortune and Men’s Eyes (Sonnet 29)). Both sonnets weigh the poet’s dissatisfaction with his condition against the consolation of friendship. The friend to whom it is addressed, as in all the first 126 sonnets, is an unidentified young nobleman. Unlike Shakespeare, the friend was both young and aristocratic, and therefore had far greater worldly prospects than the poet. Whereas the speaker in Sonnet 29 considers his current misfortunes and “outcast state,” Sonnet 30 contemplates the losses of the past.
The central metaphor of the sonnet is one of a court hearing, or “sessions.” The speaker “summons” up remembrance, as if calling a witness to the stand. The result is a mournful sense of wasted time. His regrets include not only unfulfilled worldly hopes but also lost love and friendship. The speaker is effectively presenting a “case” for his unhappiness, which grows with each line. However, he triumphantly overcomes such unhappiness in the end by the greater power of thinking of his friend. “All losses are restored, and sorrows end.”
An important aspect of the sonnet’s development is the sense of the speaker’s own process of thinking upon his past. The actual calling up of memories is what brings tears to his eyes, previously “unused to flow.” The “long since cancelled woe” of love now becomes painful all over again. Shakespeare plays with verbal repetition to suggest the double experience of past and current pain. “I grieve at grievances forgone…from woe to woe tell o’er… fore-bemoaned moan… I new pay as if not paid before.”
The poem’s final victory is the speaker’s will-power in overcoming the sadness he has called forth. The reader is drawn into the speaker’s experience, not only as a man with sorrows but also as a poet confronting memory. Sonnet 30 is a brilliant example of Shakespeare’s ability to make the creative process itself an underlying theme of his writing.
For more information on the sonnets, see Shakespeare, William (Shakespeare’s poems). See also English literature (Elizabethan poetry); Poetry (Forms) (Renaissance poetry).
