Some scholars consider Sonnet 30 not to be a very good poem. The most common point of criticism is the poem’s final two lines. After 12 lines of weeping, moaning, and crying, the speaker suddenly shifts tone. The final couplet gives the reader an altogether different message: “But if the while I think on thee (dear friend) / All losses are restored, and sorrows end.” Summarizing critical perspectives on this couplet, Elizabeth Harris Sagaser calls the couplet “gratuitous, tacked-on, insincere.” The abrupt shift in tone feels unconvincing. For example, the authors of the Oxford Companion to Shakespeare describe the couplet this way: "the concluding assertion that 'all losses are restored' by the thought of the friend constitutes a triumphant repudiation of the three quatrains' preceding evocation of life's inevitable costs or a poignantly unconvincing defiance."
One reason Sonnet 30 is evaluated negatively is that it is compared to the previous sonnet in Shakespeare’s sequence. Sonnet 29 is a well-esteemed and famous sonnet. Its themes are similar, as it describes the speaker’s negative mental state and how it is improved by thinking about his friend. The poem begins “When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, / I all alone beweep my outcast state.” The speaker is embarrassed about his bad luck and jealous of people who are in a better social position than him. The first eight lines continue in this way. At line 9, the “volta” (or shift in argument occurs). The speaker says that when he has these negative thoughts “Haply I think on thee, and then my state [. . .] / sings hymns at heaven’s gate.” Critical opinion on this poem is generally positive because it is equally balanced between the speaker’s woes and the ways that thoughts of the beloved uplift him. In comparison, Sonnet 30 appears unbalanced and too quickly concluded.
Critics also point out inconsistencies in Sonnet 30. For example, Sagaser writes: “Shouldn't we be at least a bit amused when we find that the sessions of "silent" thought are constituted by wailing, weeping, and moaning? But in general, readers don't seem to mark the irony.” This raises the question of whether the poem intentionally shows the irony between the noisy crying described and the idea that it is describing “silent” meditations. In other words, is this simply a bad poem, or is it knowingly winking at the reader?
The poem has other inconsistencies, as well. While the poem is mostly in iambic pentameter, there are several lines that do not scan consistently. For example, phrases like “weep afresh love’s long” or “death’s dateless night” have repeat accents on syllables. These break up the expected unstressed-stresses rhythm to which Shakespeare mostly adheres in his sonnets. The poem also features a number of repeated words that sound overly exaggerated to some critics. Examples include “fore-bemoanèd moan,” “new pay as if not paid before,” and “grieve at grievances.” Again, it is up to the reader to decide whether these repetitions are unintentional, and therefore take away from the poem’s sound and meaning, or whether they are purposefully designed to show the way the present inevitably repeats the past.
