Sonnet 75 Wealth Quotes

This line doesn't sound like it has much to do with wealth, does it? Well, maybe not—but critic Stephen Booth, in his commentary on Shakespeare's sonnets, suggests that there might be a hidden joke in this line that looks forward to the idea of cash that will move to the forefront of the poem in the next line. That's because Booth argues that "peace" could be intended as a pun for "a piece of money, a coin" (263). Convinced? You don't have to be. But it's good to be open to all possibilities.

For most people, wealth is a good thing, but it isn't for everybody. Ironically, wealth might be worst for the person who loves it most: a miser. According to Shakespeare, a miser is in fact in a state of "strife" (line 3) with his wealth. How can this be? We'll have to read on to find out…

This line starts off by making things seem pretty good for the miser. When the miser has money (when he is its "enjoyer"), he is "proud." Fair enough. But does the story end there? No: Shakespeare tacks on that little "and anon" at the end of the line, suggesting that things are about to change. Unfortunately, as we're about to see, they take a turn for the worse.

Here we see the problem with the miser: he can't show off his wealth without fearing that other people are going to steal it. (Remember that "Doubting" in this context means "fearing.") But what good is money if you can't spend it? That's what it's made for, right? Not for the miser, it isn't—and thus he spends his life devoted to something useless. Now we can see how wealth is worst for the person who loves it best.

Notice in this line how Shakespeare subtly shifts from making the speaker talk about the miser to making him talk about himself—by sticking in the word "you." But, even so, he keeps things in the key of miser, if you like, by using the word "counting" to express the speaker's thought process. Shakespeare could just as well have used some other word, like "deeming" or "thinking," couldn't he? By choosing this word, he suggests a finicky, mechanical decision process, a thinking process less suited to love of people than love of money.

The same goes for this line as it does for the previous line. Remember that, in the previous line, the word "counting" appeared in the phrase "counting best." Now, by adding the word "bettered," it makes us think of a miser who, having tallied up all his money, suddenly realizes that there was a whole additional stack of coins he forgot to account for. This numerical way of thinking doesn't seem appropriate to love, but rather suggests the way the speaker's thinking has become perverted by greed.