Theme: Love's Inconstancy
Content: The author excuses his own negligence of the subject by claiming it is a deliberate test of the subject's constancy, in a sonnet that turns on courtroom terminology.
Accuse me thus:
that I have scanted all
Wherein I should your
great deserts repay,
Forgot upon your
dearest love to call
Whereto all bonds
do tie me day by day;
- bonds alludes to a formal relationship between the author and the subject.
- your great deserts turns to your dearest love emphasising this sonnet's preoccupation with the subject.
- Probable ambiguity intended in deserts, as in what is deserved, and as in deserting someone.
That I have frequent been with unknown minds,
And given to time your
own dear-purchased right;
That I have hoisted sail
to all the winds
Which should transport me farthest from your
sight.
- dear-purchased right alludes again to a formal relationship between the author and subject.
- dearest (as in fondest) now morphs to dear-purchased (transactionalised).
- Probable pun on selling in sail in light of the purchasing terminology in the preceding line, i.e. the author has sold his poetical services to other people that has taken him away from the subject.
- your own dear-purchased right extends the sonnet's preoccupation with the subject's rights which then reduces to personal contact via your sight.
Book
both my wilfulness
and errors down,
And on just proof
surmise accumulate;
Bring me within the level of your
frown,
But shoot
not at me in your wakened hate,
- The formal relationship is again alluded to in the book-keeping and legal metaphors.
- Probable pun on the author's name in wilfulness, especially as the wil part is a stressed syllable, i.e. the author's behaviour is so typical of and peculiar to him that it could be called wilfulness.
- The encouragement for the subject to accuse in Q1 now morphs to a request for them to accumulate.
- A sequence of oo words is completed with Book...proof...shoot.
- The personal contact between the author and subject is emphasised with your frown which then becomes emotional with your wakened hate.
Since my appeal says I did strive to
prove
The constancy and virtue of your
love.
- In a remarkable reversal of the author's alleged inconstancy, that the author conspicuously fails to admit to anywhere in this sonnet, the author reveals that his alleged negligence was due to him testing his subject's constancy.
- The author asks the subject for proof of the author's inconstancy in Q3; in the couplet the author says he has striven (but apparently not succeeded) to find proof of the subject's constancy.
- Having risked failure with the allusion to the subject's hate the sonnet ends more positively, but speciously, on your love.
Critical text © NigelDavies.home@Virgin.net