Theme: The Dark Lady
Content: A self-contradictory sonnet that claims the author to be in the turmoil of a madman's fever of love for the mistress but does so with sane and knowing precision by way of the construction of the sonnet and its sobering final couplet.
My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
Th' uncertain sickly
appetite to please.
- Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill recalls Sonnet 73's “Consumed with that which it was nourished by”.
- sick is the main thread in this sonnet, referenced explicitly in sickly and alluded to in: physician, prescription, physic, frantic, discourse and black.
My reason, the physician
to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions
are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate
now approve
Desire is death,
which physic
did except.
- The author's desperate conclusion that Desire is death is reinforced by Desire being found in desperate and death being found in desperate.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic
mad with evermore unrest.
My thoughts and my discourse
as madmen's are,
At random from the truth vainly expressed;
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black
as hell, as dark as night.
- black as hell, as dark as night confirms again the black complexion of the mistress.
- Having completely centred the sonnet on himself the author at last introduces the cause of his madness and illness: the mistress.
- The author's madness has apparently led him to see things as the complete opposite of what they are, yet the couplet conveys far greater reason and calmness than the turmoil and madness of the quatrains.
Critical text © NigelDavies.home@Virgin.net