Sonnet 150: O From What Power Hast Thou This Powerful Might
SONNETCAST – William Shakespeare's Sonnets Recited, Revealed, RelivedShow Notes
The at first glance unspectacular Sonnet 150 sets off from the base laid down by the previous three sonnets and now wonders out loud just how the mistress with her numerous and by now well established flaws and a beauty that could – according to these poems – be most charitably described as unconventional, manages to make our poet love her at all, and apparently prize her above all others, even those who, when looked at with a clearer vision and a less feverish mind than his, are objectively much more beautiful and agreeable than she is. The conclusion it comes to though offers not only a fairly familiar observation that as the lover so enfeebled by your superhuman powers I surely deserve some love and pity from you, but also a surprisingly stark deconstruction, so as not to say demolition, of the lady's character in its entirety.
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Following an established tradition at the time, William Shakespeare furnishes his collection of 154 Sonnets with a poetic Complaint that acts as a coda to the series.
Sonnet 154 brings to a close William Shakespeare's collection of sonnets, and it does so hand-in-hand with Sonnet 153, of which it is not a continuation, but a reiteration.