Theme:      Doom
Content:    The successsion of James I to the English throne following the fears and uncertainty after Elizabeth's death.

• "Neither the personal fears of one man nor the collective soul of the whole world trying to predict the future can determine how long my love will last".
• The line Can yet the lease of my true love control is ambiguous (as in other recent sonnets). It could mean how long the author's love of his subject will last or how long the subject's lease on beauty will last (a topic the author has repeatedly addressed in earlier sonnets). In this sonnet I feel sure it is the former.
• Great diversity in scope here: starting with the personal, limited fears of the author, branching out to encompass the whole world's fears for the future, then contracting to the confined doom of one person's fate.

• The mortality of the subject is correlated with the mortality of the moon, which has survived a recent eclipse.
• The theme of predicting the future from Q1 is sustained in fallible augurs mocking their own errant predictions of the moon's demise and/or the events that it allegedly portends.
• The passing of the moon has brought reassurance and confidence.
• There may be justification for linking the death of Elizabeth I with this verse, as she was frequently referred to as the moon goddess in other poetical works, so line 5 could refer to her death. Incertainties now crown themselves assured may further refer to the new King James I whose crowning generated more uncertainty than confidence but was ultimately peaceful. And peace proclaims olives of endless age could well refer to the Peace Treaty signed between James I and Spain ending the previous decades of conflict. However, it is well-documented that astrological events such as the eclipse of the moon caused great public interest and fear during Elizabethan & Jacobean times and this sonnet fits very comfortably with these events such as I have detailed here.

• The storm has passed, everything is now well in the world, and the subject is invigorated, but the author receives death not any attention from the subject. These sentiments again correlate with those in King Lear (detailed here) where "Love cools, friendship falls off..." in light of these astrological events.
• The predictions of death foretold by the astrological events are now realised by being transferred to the author (the death of their relationship), but the author will live on in his own verse.
• The author will live on in spite of the subject and while he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes. I feel this line is deliberately ambiguous - it ostensibly refers to death itself insulting over dull and speechless tribes (the dead) but I perceive it can also refer to the subject's behaviour, insulting over lessers.
• The eclipses have actually been an omen of the demise of the author's relationship with the subject, which has been a personal disaster for him, rather than portending a global disaster.

• The verse is again classified as a monument to the subject, as in other sonnets. But in this sonnet the subject's insulting behaviour will be remembered rather than the "beauty" and "sweetness" of other sonnets which are completely absent from this one. This sonnet is the antithesis of 55 & 81.
• The subject as thy is contrasted with tyrants in that this verse will outlast the perishable crests and tombs to tyrants.
• ThY morphs into TYrant; ThOu morphs into TOmb.
• Many of the motifs of this sonnet litter Ovid's Metamorphoses (tyrants, prophetic, moon, etc.) but I don't think there's any connection unless the author has in mind the subject's metamorphosis from a thing of "sweetness" and "beauty" into a tyrant.
• This sonnet relates the uncertainties of the author's relationship with the subject as to the nation's uncertainties with the change in monarchy. The contemporary fears of impending disaster foretold by the eclipses have been used as a vehicle to express the author's own private feelings of abandonment and "doom". The rest of the world is content that the threat of disaster has passed, the augurs are mocking their own wrong predictions of doom, the planned regicide of the Gunpowder Plot has been foiled, but there has been a similar discomfort which is the author's own confined doom.