Sonnet 35 Sonnet 35 Shakespeare's Sonnet 35 is part of the Fair Youth sequence, commonly agreed to be addressed to a young man; more narrowly, it is part of a sequence running from 33 to 42, in which the speaker considers a sin committed against him by the young man, which the speaker struggles to forgive. Sonnet 35 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has fourteen lines, divided into three quatrains and a final rhyming couplet. It follows the form's rhyme scheme: "abab cdcd efef gg", and is written in a type of metre called iambic pentameter based on
Sonnet 29 Shakespeare's other sonnets. The first unique characteristic is the lack of a "when/then" pattern. Traditionally, the first eight lines of a sonnet produce a problem (a "when" statement) that is then resolved in the last six lines (a "then" statement). McRae points out, however, that the Speaker in this sonnet fails to produce a solution possibly because his overwhelming lack of self-worth prevents him from ever being able to state an actual argument, and instead uses his conclusion to contrast the negative feelings stated in the previous octave. McRae notes that this break from the traditional style of sonnet writing