Theme: Disdain
Content: The author now takes a grip of the situation contrary to recent sonnets where he has floundered. He now asserts himself and reverts to instructing his promiscuous mistress how he will betray her if she continues to stray with her eyes.
Be wise
as thou art cruel; do not press
My tongue-tied
patience with too much disdain,
Lest sorrow lend me words, and words express
The manner of my pity-wanting pain.
- The significance of eyes in recent sonnets is continued, ultimately in the final couplet with explicit reference to eyes, and phonetically anticipated in wise, tongue-tied, I, might, I, I, I, belied, thine, wide.
If I
might teach thee
wit, better it were,
Though not to love, yet, love, to tell me so
As testy sick men when their deaths be near
No news but health
from their physicians know.
- The phonetically identical No and know sandwich line 8.
- The author dying by the mistress's actions is alluded to again here as in previous sonnets - he wants to hear what he wants to hear to survive.
For if I
should despair I
should grow mad,
And in my madness might speak
ill of thee.
Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad
Mad slanderers by mad ears believed
be.
- Possible allusion to "kill" (as per Sonnet 139) in speak ill.
That I
may not be so, nor thou belied,
Bear thine
eyes
straight, though thy proud heart go wide.
- Having instructed his mistress to Be wise in Q1 he now concludes with the inevitability of her going wide.
- believed of Q3 morphs to belied.
Critical text © NigelDavies.home@Virgin.net