With Sonnet 94, William Shakespeare takes a step back from his discourse in poetry, addressed directly to his young lover, and reflects more broadly and apparently abstractly on a quality of mercy that ought not to be strained.
The sonnet makes two at first glance almost separate observations, devoting the first eight lines – the octave – to an ethical question of how to handle privilege and power, and the following six lines – the sestet – to a metaphor of the tarnished ideal. The two are, of course, not only directly related to each other to form a compelling argument about personal conduct and integrity, but they are also firmly embedded in the group of sonnets which in the Quarto Edition follows the Rival Poet sequence: everything from Sonnet 87 to and including Sonnet 96 hangs together as a coherent string of thoughts, fears, hopes, and concerns over a relationship that is teetering on the brink of collapse, and although Sonnet 94 might in theory also be considered in isolation, it in reality only makes proper sense when read as part of this group, in which it provides something of a linchpin for the astonishing turnaround in tone and stance that is set up by Sonnet 93 and comes into full force in Sonnet 95.