Theme: Transgression
Content: A woeful sonnet matching the author's transgressions with the subject's and using them both as a ransom to bind each to each other.
That you were once
unkind befriends me
now,
And for that sorrow
which I then
did feel
Needs
must I under
my
transgression
bow,
Unless my
nerves were brass
or hammered steel.
- A plethora of words containing twin letters (such as ss) feature throughout this sonnet, and even more via the Quarto's spellings, perhaps representing the mutuality of the subject and author in their dual transgressions.
- Equally, there is a series of words that contain the letter o pronounced to echo the word woe.
- There are 13 references to the author in this sonnet by way of I, mine, my and me. Meanwhile, there are 10 references to the subject by way of you, your, yours and you've. The two subjects are brought together just once in the single instance of our in Q3.
For if you were by my
unkindness shaken
As I
by yours, you've past a hell
of time,
And I,
a tyrant, have no
leisure taken
To weigh how
once
I suffered
in your crime.
O that our night
of woe might
have remembered
My deepest
sense how hard
true sorrow hits,
And soon
to you as you to me
then tendered
The humble salve which wounded
bosoms fits!
- Having phonetically alluded to woe previously in the sonnet, the word is now explicitly referred to.
- Mid-line rhyme of night with might.
But that your trespass
now becomes a
fee;
Mine ransoms yours,
and yours must ransom me.
- The author's trespass ransoms the subject's trespass whilst the subject's trespass must ransom the author himself, not just his trespass.
Critical text © NigelDavies.home@Virgin.net