The Place 2 Be: Shakespeare's Sonnets

Critique of Sonnet 133

SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS

Theme: Ménage à trois
Content: An attempt to assert the author's ego in the middle of a menage à trois where he may lose the female subject, the male friend and even his own self.

Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan
For that deep wound it gives my friend and me!
Is 't not enough to torture me alone,
But slave to slavery my sweet'st friend must be?

my friend develops into my sweet'st friend.

deep wound refers to both the hurt that the Dark Lady causes and is also a reference to the female genitalia.

Me from my self thy cruel eye hath taken,
And my next self thou harder hast engrossed.
Of him, my self, and thee I am forsaken
A torment thrice threefold thus to be crossed.

my self develops into my next self then back to my self.

The two eyes of Sonnet 132 are now reduced to a single cruel eye in this sonnet.

The author is constant though: the two occurrences of I in Sonnet 132 is maintained in this sonnet also.

A play on the menage à trois theme may be at work here by way of the apparent multiple references to numbers: alone...to...threefold...For.

him, my self, and thee appear to be deliberately ordered in that way to place the author adjacent to the friend and to pun on thee's position as the third element and it's resemblance to three - the phrase could have alternatively bbeen "him, thyself and me".

torment thrice threefold thus tormentingly tongue-twists t alliteration and the iambic whilst building from t to thr then down to th and building a 2-1-2-1 syllable pattern.

"A torment thrice threefold" is numerically represented by 133: 1 (the singular torment), 3 (thrice) and 3 (threefold). Fitting for this sonnet's number: 133.

Prison my heart in thy steel bosom's ward,
But then my friend's heart let my poor heart bail;
Whoe'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard;
Thou canst not then use rigour in my jail.

my heart develops into my friend's heart then into my poor heart then back to my heart.

Prison metaphors abound with Prison...bail...guard...jail.

And yet thou wilt; for I, being pent in thee,
Perforce am thine, and all that is in me.

No reference to my in the couplet after 9 instances of the word in the quatrains.