Sonnet 89 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. Synopsis The poet tells a youth that he can say he abandoned the poet for some fault and he will admit it. The poet will deliberately absent himself and stop discussing the youth, since he cannot even like himself if the youth no longer cares for him. The Quarto text Stephen Booth notes that two of the known 13 copies of Q1609 read 'proface' in line 11, the rest have 'prophane', and that this evidences printing house correction while the work was in the press. Structure Sonnet 89 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet, which has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. However, in Q1609, quatrain two and quatrain three constitute a complete sentence running from line 5 through to line 12. Vendler suggests a 4-8-2 structure. Kerrigan and Burrow punctuate with a full stop at the end of line 7. It can be concluded that finding a clear 4,4,4,2 structure is not easy here. Sonnet 91 has a comparable variation from 4,4,4,2 to a 6-6-2 structure. Its rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. It is composed in lines of iambic pentameter, a poetic metre based on five feet in each line, and two syllables in each foot accented weak/strong. Most of the lines are examples of regular iambic pentameter, including the 4th line: × / × / × / × / × / Against thy reasons making no defence. (89.4) / = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus. The 1st line exhibits a common metrical variation, the initial reversal: / × × / × / × / × / Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault, (89.1) This variation is repeated in the 3rd line. A mid-line reversal occurs on "knowing" in line 7. Critical Discussion Gerald Hammond (The Reader and Shakespeare's Young Man Sonnets) contrasts his view of the group of sonnets 88–93 with that of Martin Seymour-Smith (in his headnote to sonnet 88 in his edition). Against Seymour-Smith's account of "psychologically peculiar" sonnets, in which the poet sought "to demolish the edifice of his own ego", Hammond asserts that the sonnets seek to "maintain and strengthen the ego, rather than destroy it". To