SOURCE: "Dramatic Metaphor: The Shakespearean Sonnet," in The Sonnet Over Time: A Study in the Sonnets of Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Baudelaire, The University of North Carolina Press, 1988, pp. 51-93.

In the excerpt below, Bermann discusses Shakespeare 's unique creation of a dramatic lyric, focusing on Sonnet 87 to illustrate how the poet evokes a sense of interior dialogue and involves the reader in resolving the ambiguities of his metaphors.

Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
  And like enough thou know'st thy estimate,
  The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
  My bonds in thee are all determinate.
 For how do I hold thee but by thy granting,
  And for that riches where is my deserving?
 The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
 And so my patent back again is swerving.
 Thy self thou gav'st, thy own worth then not knowing,
  Or me to whom...