SOURCE: "Self-Love and Love Itself," in Shakespeare's Sonnets: Self Love and Art, Cambridge University Press, 1972, pp. 64-99.

In the following excerpt, Martin discusses the manner in which the sonnets deal with positive self-love—a trait that he describes as "necessary, if the self is to survive and not disintegrate." Martin asserts that the poet of the sonnets is neither as "passive" nor as "slavish" as some critics have described him, but that instead, the poet reveals a healthy knowledge and irony about himself and the object of his affection.

A Proper Self-love

The Sonnets are concerned with two kinds of self-love; so far we have seen only the damaging kind. It is time to look at sonnets which show self-love as a virtue: where the emphasis shifts from self-love as harmful to self-love as necessary, if the self is to survive and not to disintegrate. Shakespeare's sense of...