No Longer Mourn for Me When I Am Dead is the first line of Sonnet 71 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 the specific 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).
Like almost all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, Sonnet 71 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).
No longer mourn for me when I am dead Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world that I am fled From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell. Nay, if you read this line, remember not The hand that writ it; for I love you so That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot If thinking on me then should make you woe. O, if, I say, you look upon this verse, When I, perhaps, compounded am with clay, Do not so much as my poor name rehearse, But let your love even with my life decay; Lest the wise world should look into your moan, And mock you with me after I am gone.
This is one of the most direct, fluent, and heartfelt of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Its subject is the poet’s mortality and how his death will affect his loved one. In essence, his purpose is to persuade the loved one to forget him, so as not to bring sorrow upon the one who survives.
Sonnet 71 belongs to a larger sequence (numbers 1 to 126) of sonnets addressed to an unidentified young nobleman. Although the youth’s identity is unknown, his youth, beauty, and aristocratic position are made clear throughout this group of sonnets. These characteristics often inspire sadness as well as admiration and love from the poet. Shakespeare is occasionally critical of the young man, whose loyalty has sometimes come into question. In Sonnet 71, however, the poet’s motivation seems one of selfless loyalty. Let your love die when I do, the poet seems to say to the youth, and then you will not suffer too much.
Some critics have argued, however, that this sonnet is not as straightforward as it seems. For example, though the poet urges his friend to forget “the hand that writ” this sonnet, the effect of his composition is the opposite. The poem reminds us twice that it will remain after the poet dies. The poet pictures the time when his friend shall “read this line” or “look upon this verse.” In other words, his poetry is immortal, and so in a way his plea to be forgotten is impossible.
This leads to the possibility that the poet knows his fickle friend will not think of him after he dies. Therefore the poet must commemorate his own love through the power of verse. In this sense, the frequent references to ways in which the youth might mourn him are ironic. On a separate level, the poet might actually be pleading for the attention after death that he would not otherwise receive.
The sonnet’s concluding couplet stresses this sense of an uneven relationship between the youth and the poet. These lines do not reiterate the poet’s desire that his friend not suffer in mourning. Instead, they introduce the idea that the world might mock his friend for having been associated with the poet. The poem reminds readers of the youth’s social superiority and his occasional callousness towards his admirer. There might be an element of self-pity in the concluding references to a mocking rather than appreciative world. The poet’s imaginings of poignant re-readings of his verse, or the repeated rehearsing of his “poor name,” might be bitter fantasy. They represent the recognition he knows he will not receive from his friend.
Whatever the case, the poet’s own permanent recognition is guaranteed through the timeless force of his verse. And regardless of the youth’s possible disloyalty, the sonnet to him is a moving comment on human mortality and the fragility of love.
For more information about Shakespeare’s sonnets, see Shakespeare, William (Shakespeare’s poems).
