SONNET - 112 SUMMARY

 Sonnet No 112:

Your love and pity doth the impression fill,
Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?
You are my all-the-world, and I must strive
To know my shames and praises from your tongue;
None else to me, nor I to none alive,
That my steeled sense or changes right or wrong.
In so profound abysm I throw all care
Of others' voices, that my adder's sense
To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:
   You are so strongly in my purpose bred,
   That all the world besides methinks y'are dead.

The youth's sympathy is such that it conceals the badge of shame on the poet's brow. No-one else's opinion matters, since the youth covers the poet's misdeeds. The poet must learn to take the youth's estimate as the only one worthwhile. All other opinions are consigned to oblivion. His rejection of the rest of the world is so complete that the rest of the world may as well be dead. The poet says that the youth's love and pity compensate for the gossip that's branded the poet because what the poet cares about being called either good or bad as long as the youth ignore the bad things about the poet and acknowledge the things that are good?. The poet says that the youth is all the world to him and the poet has to try and work out what's good or bad about him from the things the youth says. No-one else matters to the poet and the poet doesn't matter to anyone alive so it's entirely the youth's opinion that determines what's right or wrong. The poet has such a profound contempt for what others say that his sharp senses are cut off from both criticism and flattery. Notice how the poet doesn't care that the world neglects him. The poet says "You mean so much to me that everyone, apart from me, thinks you're dead".

Reference: shakespeare-sonnets.com