Theme:      Love is Blind
Content:    Confusion reigns for the author between what his eyes see and what his heart tells him in an attempt to reconcile the beauty he sees in the Dark Lady with her promiscuity and how others see her. The eye/heart theme is well represented in the sonnets, in particular Sonnet 46.

• Pun on lies via where beauty is false and where beauty resides.
• The phonetic sound of eye is echoed throughout the sonnet within blind...mine...lies...ride...tied...wide...mine.
• The author's dichotomy is represented by the several opposites of this sonnet: best/worst, know/think, falsehood/truth, true/false, beauty/foul.

• Be anchored in the bay where all men ride is a euphemism for the sexual act and suggests his sexual partner's promiscuity.
• seeing is also well represented and may be being indirectly alluded to via a pun on sea by way of the vessel anchored in the bay.
• heart now appears for the first time.

• several plot also alludes to the author's sexual partner's promiscuity: a plot that is hoed by several, a common place. Reminiscent of the heterosexual "tillage" imagery in Sonnet 3 to the Young Man.
• so foul a face alludes to the Dark Lady of black complexion whom others say her "face hath not the power to make love groan"

• The author's heart is now concluded to have been as mis-placed in its assessment of the woman as his eyes have been.
• The double erring of the heart and eyes is represented in the couplet's repeat of erred in erred and transferred.