Farewell, Thou Art Too Dear for My Possessing is the first line of Sonnet 87 by the great English playwright and poet William Shakespeare.
The sonnets were published in 1609, after Shakespeare had already established himself as a playwright. He probably composed the verses over a number of years, though their exact dates are unknown. Shakespeare wrote a sequence of 154 sonnets, but some scholars think a different poet composed Sonnets 153 and 154, those focused on Cupid, the Roman god of love. Only two of the sonnets were published before 1609, in the anthology The Passionate Pilgrim (1599). See Shakespeare, William.
Like almost all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, Sonnet 87 consists of three quatrains (four-line units) followed by a concluding couplet (two-line unit). The four quatrains have a rhyme scheme of abab, cdcd, efef, with the final couplet a rhyming one (gg).
Farewell, thou art too dear for my possessing, And like enough thou know’st thy estimate. The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing; My bonds in thee are all determinate. For how do I hold thee but by thy granting, And for that riches where is my deserving? The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting, And so my patent back again is swerving. Thyself thou gav’st, thy own worth then not knowing, Or me, to whom thou gav’st it, else mistaking; So thy great gift, upon misprision growing, Comes home again, on better judgement making. Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter, In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.
Sonnet 87 is one of several sonnets about the loss of love. The sonnet depicts a situation in which the speaker has been rejected or made to feel insufficient. Shakespeare uses legal metaphors (“estimate,” “charter,” “bonds,” “patent”) to explore the theme of possession. The sonnet ends with the bleak realization that the speaker has no claim to the subject of the sonnet and perhaps never did. The tone is one of measured grief and occasional bitterness at rejection. But the speaker maintains a dignity of expression that makes possible his continued love, though the loved one does not return his feeling.
Sonnet 87 belongs to a large group of sonnets (number 1 to 126) that are addressed to a young nobleman whose identity is not known. The youth was presumably of an aristocratic background. Many of the sonnets in this group concern the poet’s unworthiness in social terms as compared to his noble friend. In this sonnet, much of the reason for the speaker’s rejection is the friend’s superior social status. The youth is proud and somewhat arrogant about his position: “like enough thou know’st thy estimate.”
The speaker concludes that their previous friendship—ironically referred to as his “patent,” or right to ownership—was based on “misprision.” Misprision in this sense indicates misunderstanding, or error. The only way to explain the youth’s earlier gift of friendship, now withdrawn, is to see it as a miscalculation of the speaker’s worth. The use of the word “great” could have ironic or sarcastic meanings in this context. The youth, in other words, now considers friendship with himself a considerable privilege.
The speaker summarizes the affair as like a dream, exposed as fraudulent upon waking. In a final gesture of resignation, he depicts himself as the dreamer flattered by his own imagination. The youth, though quite possibly arrogant and unfair, is excused. His behavior is simply part of the nature of things.
For more information about Shakespeare’s sonnets, see Shakespeare, William (Shakespeare’s poems). See also English literature (Elizabethan poetry); Poetry (Forms) (History) (Renaissance poetry).
