A Lover’s Complaint is one of Shakespeare’s least considered works – assuming that is, that the poem was actually written by him, in whole or in part. The poem was first published in 1609 as an addendum to the first published edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. In as much as the poem deals with a form of love triangle, it is reminiscent of the subject matter of a number of the sonnets and perhaps it is this which persuaded the publisher to include it. It would appear that the poem was in fact written much earlier, perhaps in or around 1591, before Shakespeare had established his reputation and indeed the majesty of thought which informs the Sonnets.

The poem is written in Rhyme (or Rime) Royal, which requires seven line stanzas of iambic pentameter with a rhyme scheme of ababbcc. The five unstressed and stressed feet may be seen in the lines: “He had the dialect and different skill,/Catching all passions in his craft of will.” There are forty-seven such stanzas in the complete poem. It is a narrative poem, which means it involves a specific individual telling a story in verse. In this case, the central figure is a young woman by a riverside who is bemoaning her fate to an older listener. The woman is distraught that she fell for the charms of a young man who, as young men so often do, loved her and then left her. The woman observes that, had she the chance to meet him again and become exposed to his charms once more, it is most likely that she would once again succumb, revealing perhaps that she has learned nothing from the experience or that the experience was not so traumatic that she would not mind revisiting it or, even, the inevitable weakness of the flesh when faced with temptation.

It is possible to interpret the poem such that it has a number of deeper, subtler readings but, given the limited depth of meaning and language in the work, this seems to be a little forced. Of all the arguments that various scholars have put forward to explain that it was written by someone other than Shakespeare, the most persuasive is surely that it is simply not as good as the remainder of his work. It is technically competent – the author strings together forty-seven stanzas which both rhyme and scan well enough but, thematically, it seems that Shakespeare is able to infuse more meaning and emotion in just one of his sonnets than the author did in the entirety of the Lover’s Complaint.