1. Mary Archer
23 Mar 2015
ENG 331 Heberle
Shakespeare’s Sonnets
For all its technical mastery of the precise sonnet form, Shakespeare’s sonnets have
resisted being forgotten because of its faithful depiction of unerring love. The speaker in sonnets
1-126 loves a male friend and requires no return. In sonnets 127-152, the speaker loves a “dark
mistress” and requires faithfulness, although he is sometimes content to love uncertain of her
fidelity. The essential difference between the two is constancy and inconstancy as the first lover
is bodiless, portrayed by natural metaphor, and the second is substantial, referenced to by her
physicality.
Shakespeare often appears at a distance from his male friend. Other lovers rival for his
male friend’s (who is never named) attention, as in sonnet 23 line 12, where Shakespeare hopes
his love will read more worth in his true sonnets, “More than that tongue that more hath more
expressed.” Yet Shakespeare feels not that he is in true competition because none more than him
feels true love. Instead, he leaves it up to his lover to discern with “love’s fine wit” (line 14) his
own quality. Shakespeare validates the sincerity of his own love as he validates his lover’s
capacity to know which love is worth keeping. Such complete trust must close distance as the
two lovers expect harmony with each other.
The distance is also felt as cloud obscures sun, as “But out, alack, he was but one hour
mine; / The region cloud hath masked him from me know” (33.11-12). The sun is an ever-
shining thing, and though “ugly rack” may pass over “celestial face,” the cloud must pass again.
Although Shakespeare had his love for “but one hour,” as the sun always shines underneath

2. cloud, so too Shakespeare can feel his love although his love may not be physically present, as
“Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth” (33.13). The thought that Shakespeare could only
have his love for a short time is replaced with the knowledge that Shakespeare can think on him
continually. What distance between them can be closed through the certainty of each other’s
love.
The distance is sometimes between Shakespeare and himself. In sonnet 29, Shakespeare
says, “in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes / I all alone beweep my outcast state / And
trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries” (29.1-3). The sun beneath this cloud of doom is
again his male friend’s “celestial face” (33.6), as “Haply I think on thee, and then my state /
(Like to the lark at break of day arising / From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate”
(29.10-12). So his male friend’s remembrance is like a continual spring of gladness that
Shakespeare only has to dip into to feel like all is well.
The theme continues in sonnet 30, as Shakespeare thinks on “the lack of many a thing I
sought” (30.3), and other such lack, like “canceled woe,” (7) “vanished sight” (8), and
“grievances foregone” (9). And such lack is proved a passing cloud, as “But if the while I think
on thee, dear friend, / All losses are restored and sorrows end” (13-14). So, Shakespeare’s true
lover is the knowledge he carries within himself, and which his male friend is the face of, since
Shakespeare is loving himself without a lover present, in ways that no lover could ever really
hope to because no lover is as continual as the sun.
Shakespeare sees such incontinuity as he makes clear though his lover’s love defies all
manner of lack, his lover’s body must inevitably crumble into dust. Wanting to bridge the gap
between what is timeless and what is temporary, Shakespeare urges his love to procreate, since
“nothing ‘gainst time’s scythe can make defense / Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee

3. hence” (12.13-14). In that way, a love that is like the inextinguishable presence of the sun can
have eternal presence walking on the earth though the lover’s bloodline. And what brings
Shakespeare vigor in spirit Shakespeare thinks of as youth in his male love: he protests that his
love’s physical youth must decline with age, so he battles with Time and “ingrafts” him “new”
(15.14) in the lines of his verse. In short, Shakespeare gained youth from youth, but since one
youth was perpetual and the other decaying, he reconciled the two and made the decaying youth
eternal through his sonnets.
Such sonnets Shakespeare imagines to withstand all hits from Time and man’s caprices:
when stone tomb is swept in wind (55.4), and when Mars’ sword cleaves the world (7), and when
Judgement Day should pass (13), his memory will live on. And so bold is Shakespeare’s hope
that his verse will thrive, he writes it would even conquer that which conquers all: “And yet to
times in hope my verse shall stand, / Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand” (60. 13-14). For,
the force which conquers “canceled woe,” (30.7) “vanished sight” (8), and “grievances
foregone” (9) must also conquer Time. The courage of Shakespeare’s proclamations shines a
light on the fortification his love must have daily given him during desolation.
With this courage, Shakespeare begins to court one not traditionally considered “fair”
(127.1) and states, “now is black beauty’s successive heir” (3). Shakespeare, who once left it to
his “lover’s fine wit” (23.14) to see beauty where it lay in his verses, now charges himself to see
beauty in the black of his lady’s eyebrows, where others, lovers of only eyes and eyebrows fair,
were “Sland’ring creation with a false esteem” (127.12). In this sense, Shakespeare becomes the
lover he once wanted to be loved by.
In other senses, Shakespeare becomes a much more typical man. Typical in his want of
affection (128) and typical in his conception of male-female relationships as one of co-

4. dependence: “On purpose laid to make the taker mad: Mad in pursuit, and in possession so”
(129.8-9). So the consummation of love is one of ephemeral happiness, “A bliss in proof and
proved, a very woe” (11). Without the “marriage of true minds,” (116.1), the union of bodies
lacks in savor, “Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame” (129.1).
Shakespeare’s former certainty in his love is lacking here. Before, he could think of his
love’s face and know their love was shared. With this lady, Shakespeare has to share her bed in
order to know his love was shared, as in the line,“a bliss in proof.” The implication being all
other time was not bliss, unlike the feeling of the line, “But if the while I think on thee, dear
friend, / All losses are restored and sorrows end” (30.13-14). So, by sonnet 129, Shakespeare is
in the pain of agitation instead of love. He is deprived of all sense of equilibrium unless he is
with her, and then knowing her “bliss” he is deprived all the more farther, and must continually
come back for more. Unfortunately, such is thought to be typical, normal experience, as “All this
the world well knows; yet none knows well / To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell”
(129.13-14). With his male love, “heaven” is the erasure of lack, and with his female love,
“heaven” is the creation of lack.
This central contrast can be felt in the comparison in the way Shakespeare uses metaphor
in sonnets 18 and 130. In the first, the male love is above metaphor, and in the second, the
female love is below metaphor. The young man in sonnet 18 is more perfect than “a summer’s
day” (18.1), “more lovely and more temperate” (2). Being “temperate” is to encourage
equilibrium, and by extension, fulfillment. As for Shakespeare’s mistress, in sonnet 130
Shakespeare compares her with ideal beautiful woman in all the ways she lacks, and he also
states that the ideal standard of beauty of the day was itself lacking (130.14). Such that
Shakespeare uses a double negative to praise his love as “rare” (13).

5. Though praised as rare, in all her description in sonnet 130, the mistress is ordinary. The
wires that grow on her head are black (4) instead of gold as in the sonnets Shakespeare satirizes.
Black wires have practical value; they don’t get twisted into fine jewelry. Her breasts are dun
instead of snow (3): white is an impractical color as it gets dirtied easily. Her cheeks have no
roses in them (6): flowers are ornamental. The sense of function vs. fineness is similar to the way
Shakespeare approaches the mistress vs. the male friend: comfort for bodily loneliness in one,
delight in intellectual similarity in the other.
Shakespeare writes: “I grant I never saw a goddess go; / My mistress, when she walks,
treads on the ground” (12). The male friend walks above nature and when Shakespeare thinks his
most perfect thoughts, he walks with him. But in his lack, in his imperfect self, Shakespeare must
walk on the ground. And when he’s there, is desirous of a mistress who also “treads on the
ground” with him.
While Shakespeare may think of his “lust” (129.2) as base, it is also the frailty that makes
his writing accessible, as it marks a psychological flaw that writers know readers need to make a
hero, in this case Shakespeare himself, human in human contradiction. As a day is both sunlight
and night, so too Shakespeare needs the “sun” of his male friend and the “dark” (147.14) of his
mistress. He needs a mistress as dark as the dark of his night.
In sonnet 105 Shakespeare states all his sonnets until then about his male love are
variants of the theme of he is all things ‘Fair, kind and true’ (105.8-9). The dark mistress of
sonnets 127-152 will at one point or another contradict or redefine each of these sentiments. In
sonnets 127 and 130, she is not “fair” of skin. In 129, 144 and 147 she is not kind, as her love is
like “despair” (144.1) or a “fever” (147.1). In sonnets 138 and 152, she is not “true,” as in sonnet

6. 138 she lies about Shakespeare’s age, and in sonnet 152, more seriously, she breaks the oaths
between lovers to remain sexually faithful.
One might think Shakespeare lacks friendship with his mistress because she apparently
lacks the virtues he holds dearest. But, not quite so: in sonnet 138 Shakespeare shows his
mistress’ lack in fairness and truth, and to some extent kindness. In its place is understated
compassion, as though she lies to him and she lies about him, still she lies with him and shares
her warmth for a time. What they share is their “faults” (14) and their “seeming trust” (11), and
the willingness to let the “lies” (2) go unquestioned. Such is like the silent solace of the night in
which lovers can reach towards each other and let the less loved things stay hidden.
Shakespeare had need of compassion towards himself and towards others so that he could
tell the stories that he did: all the humor, the tragedy, the romance, arises from a sense of unity
with man, who forever gropes for the temporary and the eternal. “Poor soul, the center of my
sinful earth,” (146.1) Shakespeare writes. Sonnet 146 is a solemn, but affectionate poem about
the inevitability of death and a person’s tireless struggle to clothe a dying thing with splendor, as
if death can be stalled or forgotten.
And he with plaintive voice asks, “Why so large cost, having so short a lease, / Dost thou
upon thy fading mansion spend?” (5-6). To spend on oneself too much to preserve one’s youth is
a problem associated with women more so than men. And being a woman’s concern, and in the
section devoted to his dark mistress, Shakespeare in a sense shares his humanity with the woman
who betrayed his vows and puts them each on a plane of irrefutable equality. (It may be noted,
the male friend’s youth can never be preserved enough-- his body is aligned with eternity.)
Shakespeare continues, “And death once dead, there’s no more dying then” (14). Once
the physical body, the dying half of a man or woman, is dead, then what’s left is the undying

7. half. By calling the physical body “death,” Shakespeare also calls all of physical existence
“death.” Because the dark mistress is described more often than not in terms of the body, she too
is “death.” And in sonnet 147, though “desire is death” (147.8), Shakespeare writes “Past cure I
am, now reason is past care” (9). The disease that needs curing is venereal disease, and he
Shakespeare gets that by intercourse with his dark mistress’ physical body, and so gets death
from loving death. But still, Shakespeare has an unquenchable love for physical existence as he
makes twenty oaths to his dark lady (152.6). He knows physical life will end, just as she will
break all her vows, but still he must believe in her: “For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep
kindness, / Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy” (9-10). He must swear thus even as he
must make his eyes “swear against the thing they see” (12).
The lover of 1-126, being bodiless, ever youthful--or, if in body, ever present through his
progeny or in verse-- is representative of non-physical reality, the life of the mind. The lover of
127-152, having body, and being a killer of reason (147.5-9), is representative of physical reality
and the life of the senses: all that one may touch, taste, smell, hear and see (130.1-14, “breath,”
“music,” “roses,” etc.). Non-physical reality is ever-shining, and “Love’s not Time’s fool”
(116.9). But physical reality must bow to time, as the dark mistress must play to the beat of the
music sheet, as her fingers kiss the keys of the spinet or virginal in sonnet 128. And the dark
mistress must be fickle, just as the male love must be constant, as her hours end and his continue.
Yet despite all, Shakespeare loves both, and pledges fidelity to each as long as his poems last.