William Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, and all of them are common in that they are the most romantic poetry to ever exist in the English language. Shakespeare used the iambic pentameter sonnets as an avenue to express some of his innermost feelings: his love for a dark lady and a young man. While all the sonnets have this common aspect, sonnets 129 and 144 are especially similar in that they bring out the theme of love versus lust in a rather special way.
Sonnet 129 goes out of the norm to express some unique sense of desperation where the poet seems to be deep into some male anguish. The sonnet brings the reader into a deeper sense of Shakespeare’s lustful being – specifically the manner in which the male lusts for the female – and some of his deepest fears. However, it is worth noting that Shakespeare does not use the first person ‘I’, and neither does he mention thou, thy, me, myself, and thyself at any point in the poem. This scheme is a major deviation from other sonnets, all of which bear a personal reference. Sonnet 144, on the other hand, is the only one that explicitly refers to both the young man and the dark lady as the ‘Two Loves.’ As is typical of him, the poet detaches himself from this love triangle and he looks into the situation with a third party point of view. In the 144 th sonnet, the poet is mocking and cynical, partly because of the fact that the uncertainties surrounding the relationship torment him. This paper is an analysis of the theme of love versus lust in sonnets 129 and 144 and a clear comparison between the two.
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Sonnet 129 is all about the male and female physical bodies, and lusting after the same. It is about the desire to be involved in lovemaking, and it especially talks about sex and other bodily functions. The first twelve lines (the three quatrains) are a build-up of each other before the eventual release expressed inlined 13 and 14. The first line is a suggestion that the act of sex is shameful and wasteful, especially for the male beings. ‘ Expense of spirit’ is a suggestion of the loss of a vital force while ‘ in a waste of shame ’ creates an image of an empty victim of lust.
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action; and till action, lust
The lines that follow bear the terms ‘action’ and ‘lust,’ and it goes without saying that the enjambment between lines one, two and three bring the reader into a deep sense and definition of lust, where two dark phrases and eight potent adjectives combine to leave the reader in a clear sense regarding the feelings of the writer. When the poet says ‘lust in action,’ one can clearly see the existence of lust during the sexual act, and the pleasure at this point is at the expense of the shame that the one involved will experience later.
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
In these lines, one can easily sense the dangerous emotional energies and anger at work, where lust is temporarily enjoyed during the act, but one immediately despises it after the chase is over. This complex poem is filled with the idea of sexual desire from the point of its longing, its fulfilment, to the point where it is just a memory, when the one involved simply remembers it as a sense of shame. In the second quatrain, we see the poet make a major shift from longing and fulfilment to memory. Once the lust has been enjoyed, the individual immediately begins to despise it. It becomes shameful and something to hate and no longer desire. The poet says, ‘ had, having, and in the quest to have ’ to express the three forms of lust, and it mad nature ("The Theologian Post-Machiavelli: Shakespeare on Love and Lust in Sonnet 129", 2018) .
Sonnet 144 is one which is considered to have a deeper understanding of the attitude that Shakespeare has towards love compared to the other sonnets. For a long time, the aspect of physical and spiritual love has been a call for battle in literature, and this is expressed in sonnet 144. Here, Shakespeare seems to support the traditionalists who held on to the belief that it was the woman’s nature to corrupt pure love. In other words, the spiritual ideal love is completely independent of the woman, and the existence of true love can only be between males. In this case, the poet follows the traditional line of thought that the woman is an evil being, and that her sexuality is a threat to both the poet who is in love with her and also to his friend, the pure spirit of love. Just as in sonnet 129, the body seems to be winning in the battle between the spirit and the body, and the battle between heaven and hell. The result is that the poet flings into a rage of jealousy, and his imagination begins to riot when he imagines what the lovers could have done together.
Two loves I have of comfort and despair, Which like two spirits do suggest me still: The better angel is a man right fair, The worser spirit a woman colour’d ill. To win me soon to hell, my female evil,
(Shakespeare Sonnet 144).
The young man and the dark lady are a representation of the two types of love that are battling for supremacy within the character of the poet: shameful lust and selfless adoration. However, the poet is simply a spectator at this point. His greatest fear at this point is that the young man will secretly consent to the woman that he is advancing, ‘ And whether that my angel be turned fiend / Suspect I may, yet not directly tell.’
It is ironic that the only certainty that the poet has is one of the uncertainties of the relationship between the dark lady and the young man.
In the first quatrain of Shakespearean sonnet 144, we see the poet making a description of his two loves, where he refers to one as comforting (the beautiful and handsome young man), and the other one as one who brings despair (the dark woman). It is evident that the poet has a preference for the love of the young man compared to the dark lady. In the second quatrain, he proceeds to say that the female lover will tempt his better angel away from him and eventually send him, the poet, to hell ("Analysis of Shakespeare's Sonnet 144." 2018) .
While sonnet 129 is mainly about a man lusting after a woman and her body, sonnet 144 takes a different angle, where the man no longer wants anything to do with the woman but is after the young man. In sonnet 144, we see the bisexual nature of the poet, where he is afraid of being involved with the woman, who he views as the devil herself. In sonnet 129, we see the man regretting and going into a deep sense of shame once the sense of lust has been satisfied. However, the lust in sonnet 144 develops into love, and it is beautiful with no shame recorded.
References
Shakespeare Sonnet 144 - Two loves I have of comfort and despair. (2018). Retrieved from http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/144.html
The Theologian Post-Machiavelli: Shakespeare on Love and Lust in Sonnet 129. (2018). Retrieved from http://www.ashokkarra.com/2007/02/the-theologian-post-machiavelli-shakespeare-on-love-and-lust-in-sonnet-129/
