On the assumption that Shakespeare wrote his sonnets, as it were, badly, so as to show what happens when the poet is seduced by fixed forms, Bonnefoy disavows his first versions and consents, in order to exhibit the negativity of Shakespeare's writing here, to go along with him by respecting, loosely, the parameters of the sonnet. In so doing he finds, paradoxically, a new voice and a new language, and proves once again the creative nature of all good translation.