Theme:     Veiled Vices
Content:   Possibly a self-addressed sonnet about the counterpoint between outward beauty and hidden vices. Massive anagrammatic, metaphorical and punning word play.

• “How well you embellish your faults.”
• Shame linked with name again, and the analogy of the canker in the flower as in other sonnets.
• Exclamatory delight at the paradox of the inner sin within the outwardly attractive.
• The author may be talking about himself.
• The budding name in line 3 may refer to the flower “Sweet William”.
• Possible further pun on sweets of “Sweet William” in line 4.
• Conversely, the reference to rose may be a pun on Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton.
• lovely contains a veiled phonetic anagram of “evil” (“evol”) signifying the way something of apparent beauty hides an inner vice which is the whole essence of this sonnet.
• The word lose is enclosed in the word enclose which is revealed explicitly in the final couplet.
• rose is capitalised in the Quarto: “Rose”.
• This is an o sonnet: heavy use of key words that include o features throughout with the pairing of O and enclose in line 4 to round off this quatrain.
• in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose sums up the sonnet’s presentation of apparently sweet words that veil vices.

• “You can tell contemporary tales and are just as able to be lascivious and ameliorate an otherwise lewd text with your name, e.g. Sonnet 136.”
• Pun on ill for “Will”: the vice ill is veiled by his name “Will” - naming his name blesses an ill report by changing it to a “Will” report.
• tells also phonetically veils the word “ill” (“ell”).
• lascivious also veils a phonetic anagram of the word “evil” (“ivil”).
• lascivious also veils a phonetic anagram of the word “vices” (“vicis”).
• The budding name of Q1 now becomes a full naming thy name, reinforcing the preoccupation in the first 2 quatrains of the importance of the subject’s name.
• Another o based quatrain.

• “I am full of vices that are disguised by my graces that seduces others’ view of me.”
• Virtual euphoria at his own paradox.
• Mansion conveys the enormity of the vices as well as the space in which they are able to be disguised. Mansion is a euphemism for the human body and may contain a pun on "man".
• The word veil itself veils the word “ill” (“il”) that it contains.
• The word veil is also an anagram of “evil”.
• Mid-line rhyme of those and chose.

• “Keep your wits about you; keep them sharp; vice is the spice of life but take heed.”
• The address to dear heart reinforces the sonnet being directed at the author himself rather than at some other person, as “dear love” or similar would have done.
• The personification of the knife as his (instead of “its”) again correlates the subject with a male, and possibly the author.
• Vice was a character in the old morality plays who was commonly represented by a dagger, so vice is metaphorically alluded to again here in knife.
• Transformation of heed to heart to hardest.
• The word privilege again “veils” the word “ill” (“il”) that it contains.
• The word privilege also contains an anagram of “evil”.
• ill is now explicitly used in the conclusion to the sonnet thereby “unveiling” it.
• ill used also contains a phonetic anagram of “evil” (euil”).
• The word privilege is subsequently echoed in ill...edge.