Theme: Your Time is Your Own
Content: A follow-on from Sonnet 57 which asserts that how the subject spends their time is their own concern although it is hell for the author.
That God forbid, that made me first your
slave,
I should
in thought control
your
times
of pleasure,
Or at your hand
th'
account
of
hours
to
crave,
Being your
vassal bound
to stay your
leisure.
- The author states that the author's role as slave in relation to the subject is divinely ordained, perhaps by God or the god Eros - the god of love.
- The central theme of time ticks on in times, hand (of a clock) and hours.
- This is a you / u / your sonnet with heavy usage of you & your and key words that contain the letter u emphasising the subject's total preoccupation with himself. The Quarto's spelling of v's as u's extends this still further, e.g. slaue and craue.
- Sonnet 136 uses the word account in an obvious pun on "cunt", joined by many puns on the author's name Will for the male sexual member. Here account appears to be the same pun, especially if hours is a further pun on "whores" which explains what the subject has been doing with his time.
O let me suffer,
being at your
beck,
Th' imprisoned absence
of your liberty,
And patience, tame
to
sufferance, bide
each check,
Without
accusing you
of injury.
- Th' im graphically reflects the theme of time.
- tame provides further graphic reflection of time.
Be where you
list, your charter
is so strong
That you yourself
may privilege your time
To what you
will; to you
it doth belong
Yourself to pardon
of self-doing crime.
- At last, the author now accuses the subject of self-doing crime, countering the relentless admissions that the subject's time is his own to do with as he chooses.
I am to wait, though
waiting so be hell,
Not blame your
pleasure, be
it ill or well.
- Pun on the author's name again in ill or well, especially as they are both stressed syllables.
Critical text © NigelDavies.home@Virgin.net