Theme:      Vileness
Content:    A brilliant sonnet in which the author declares that it is better to be actually guilty of a transgression than be thought to be.

• As an anagram of evil and the hidden word ill, vile offers the interpretation of multiple sins as well as verbally representing the sonnet's play on appearances being deceiving in respect of being thought guilty of a transgression yet maybe being innocent of it.
• The state of being vile is contrasted with the state of being esteemed to be vile in line 1.
• The state of not being is contrasted with the state of being in line 2.
• The sense of feeling is contrasted with the sense of seeing in line 4.
• Perception always follows reality in this quatrain.
• The immortal to be...[or]...not to be line is echoed here in lines 1 and 2.
• The sonnet is stocked with explicit and fragmented references to evil, vile and ill showing that, as in the penultimate line, evil is general and everywhere.
• receives also contains the evi of evil and vile.
• There is a preponderance of words that contain repeated letters such as ee and oo, plus repeated words such as vile and bad, and repeated prefixes such as re and th, that collectively provide constant drive to this sonnet and illustrate the author's almost stuttering exasperation at others' hypocrisy.
• The word be appears 5 times (more than any other word) and there is also a preponderance of words that begin with b that collectively anticipate the final bad's in the couplet.

• Reality now follows perception in this quatrain.
• Give and sportive also contain the evi of evil and vile.
• "ill" is embedded in frailties, frailer and wills.
• The 4 references to the author's weaknesses (my sportive blood, my frailties, my abuses, my deeds) are balanced by 4 references to others' weaknesses (their wills, their own [abuses], their rank thoughts, their badness).
• Possible pun on the author's name in wills in so far as their wills are different from the author, especially as the word is a stressed syllable.
• wills is certainly a pun on female genitalia, augmented by count (cunt).

• I am that I am repeats God's statement to Moses in Exodus 3:14 and echoes Paul's "I am what I am" statement in Corinthians 15:10. It is also the converse of Iago's and Viola's "I am not what I am".
• Possible pun on the author's name via the conjoinment of wills in line 8 and the I am below it in line 9: will + I am = William.
• evil, not explicitly revealed until the couplet, is alluded to here in level and bevel and themselves thereby transferring and embedding the evil in others.
• The state of being straight is contrasted with the state of being bevel in line 3.
• The faculty of thought is contrasted with the action of deeds in line 4.
• reckon morphs to rank.
• though morphs to thoughts.
• think in Q2 anticipates, as a reverse compound, rank thoughts.

• vile in line 1 now has its anagram revealed in evil.