Sonnet 139: O Call Not Me to Justify the Wrong
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O call not me to justify the wrong
That thy unkindness lays upon my heart; Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue, Use power with power, and slay me not by art. Tell me thou lovest elsewhere, but in my sight, Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside. What needst thou wound with cunning when thy might Is more than my ore-pressed defence can bide? Let me excuse thee: ah, my love well knows Her pretty looks have been mine enemies, And therefore from my face she turns my foes, That they elsewhere might dart their injuries. Yet do not so, but since I am near slain, Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain. |
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O call not me to justify the wrong
That thy unkindness lays upon my heart; |
Don't call on me – or, as in a courtroom, don't call me as a witness – to justify the wrong that your unkindness puts on my heart as a burden or pain.
That this unkindness is the mistress's infidelity is, in the context of the previous four sonnets already virtually implied, but now also further specified: |
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Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue,
Use power with power, and slay me not by art. |
Don't metaphorically or emotionally wound me with your eyes but do so with your words: use the power that you have to make me suffer with direct and outright force, rather than killing me softly with artful, as in wily, underhand ways.
PRONUNCIATION: Note that power here in both cases is pronounced as one syllable: [powr]. |
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Tell me thou lovest elsewhere, but in my sight,
Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside, |
Tell me to my face that you love other men, but while you are with me, dear heart, desist from glancing at or, as is the implication, flirting with, other men.
This is only the second time, and these two are the only two occasions, that Shakespeare uses the expression 'dear heart' to address the object of his love in these sonnets. He first does so in Sonnet 95, the harshest admonition of his young man for his philandering behaviour, which starts with the lines: How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose, Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name? O in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose! And ends on: Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege: The hardest knife ill used doth lose his edge. It is therefore somewhat significant that here, too, this address finds itself in a context that makes it sound borderline sarcastic, or even, we may get the impression, infused with a note of menace or indeed despair. |
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What needst thou wound with cunning when thy might
Is more than my ore-pressed defence can bide? |
Why should you need to hurt me with your cunning, supposedly subtle ways, when your power over me is greater than anything that my exhausted, overwhelmed defence against your enticement of me can sustain.
The idea is that I am so beholden to you and so defenceless against the power you exercise over me – a sentiment that has been expressed also in the four sonnets preceding this one – that you have no need to try and hide from me the fact that you also find other men attractive and have sexual relations with them. |
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Let me excuse thee: ah, my love well knows
Her pretty looks have been mine enemies, |
In a text book case of a Petrarchan volta, Shakespeare now turns his argument on its head and devises an excuse for his mistress's conduct: she, my love, knows that her pretty looks – for which here read the flirtatious, seductive glances of her eyes – have been my enemies who have overwhelmed my defences and conquered my heart.
The implication is that they have done so – as indeed other sonnets suggest – against my will and better judgement. And although for the argument to make sense, her 'pretty looks' here describe the way she looks at me, a secondary meaning of 'her pretty appearance' may in fact be intended, though that, in view of how Shakespeare describes his mistress in this series generally, would then seem to be laced with more than just a hint of irony. |
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And therefore from my face she turns my foes,
That they elsewhere might dart their injuries. |
And because of this she turns these enemies of mine, her eyes, elsewhere – implied of course is to other men – so that they can send their harmful darts, which are just like Cupid's arrows, at them and thus spare or preserve me.
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Yet do not so, but since I am near slain,
Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain. |
But in a second turn of the argument, this time placed in a perfectly Shakespearean way with the closing couplet, Shakespeare now implores his mistress; do not do this, don't spare me like this, but since I am already nearly overcome and essentially defenceless, direct your looks at me so they can kill me outright and thus rid me of my love pain.
The conceit of the mistress who kills her lover with her looks, as editors generally point out, is a commonplace in sonneteering, deployed also by Philip Sidney in his Astrophel and Stella, which Shakespeare sails quite close to on occasions and appears to borrow from fairly liberally in several of his sonnets. We quoted Sidney's Sonnet 7 when discussing the first of these Dark Lady Sonnets by William Shakespeare, Sonnet 127, and here a closer look at Sidney is once again warranted, this time his poem numbered 48: Soul's joy, bend not those morning stars from me. Where virtue is made strong by beauty's might, Where love is chasteness, pain doth learn delight, And humbleness grows one with majesty. Whatever may ensue, o let me be Copartner of the riches of that sight. Let not mine eyes be hell-driven from that light; O look, o shine, o let me die, and see. For though I oft myself of them bemoan That through my heart their beamy darts be gone, Whose cureless wounds even now most freshly bleed, Yet since my death-wound is already got, Dear killer, spare not thy sweet-cruel shot: A kind of grace it is to slay with speed. Noteworthy in this context too is that 'to die' is a widely used Early Modern English euphemism for 'to orgasm', and so when Sidney says "O look, o shine, o let me die" he doesn't, of course, mean let me die literally, but very much metaphorically in that sense, and so a lady whose looks kill and thus rid her lover of his pain is one who admits him to have sex with her and, in process and particularly climax thereof, relieves him from his aching desire, at least momentarily... |
With Sonnet 139, William Shakespeare finds himself quite comfortably in the domain of the classical Petrarchan sonnet, invoking the themes and poetic tropes that other sonneteers of the period, most notably Sir Philip Sidney in his Astrophel and Stella use to speak about their mistress's capacity to captivate and, if they so wish, kill them with their looks.
The initial plea with the mistress is simple and straightforward: I know you have other men, so when you are with me, just tell me to my face that this is the case, rather than flirting with them with furtive glances. Having devoted the octave – the eight lines of the first two quatrains – of his sonnet to this principal argument, he then uses the sestet – the six lines of the final quatrain and the closing couplet – to propose a somewhat sophistic excuse for his mistress's behaviour, allowing for the fanciful idea that she divert her devastating looks to other men so as to spare him additional suffering, which, he finally resolves she shouldn't do, since he'd rather 'die' – at least metaphorically – than be left in limbo.
When discussing Sonnet 127, the first of the Dark Lady Sonnets in the collection of 1609, we became aware of two things: firstly, that that poem showed noticeable similarities to Sidney's Sonnet 7, and secondly that in its overall tone and stance it was fairly generic: it sounded rather uninvolved and could – more than many of the other sonnets, we felt – have been written about practically any woman with black eyes, making a point mostly about what the world used to consider 'fair', as in beautiful, in the olden days and now apparently no longer seemed to do.
With Sonnet 128 too we noted that it "is one of those poems that could, in theory, be written by almost anyone to anyone," since it used the poetic trope of a lover envying his mistress's instrument for the tender touches it receives from her, but did not further characterise the woman in question.
Sonnet 129 offered a minor diatribe on the true dreadfulness of sex if looked at from a rational perspective, and the famous Sonnet 130 more than anything mocked other poets' eulogising of their mistresses in a subtly ironic tone that presented William Shakespeare's mistress as very much human, compared to the supposed goddesses other poets elect to go on about.
It was with Sonnet 131 that we first got a sense of the mistress in question being 'dark' not only in her appearance but also in her deeds. Sonnet 132 briefly reverted to the theme of the lover who deserves pity from his mistress for the pining he must do for her, but Sonnets 133 and 134 left us in no doubt that certainly from Shakespeare's point of view his mistress exercising dark intentions was absolutely the case, seeing that she had seduced – if he is at all to be believed – his young lover.
Sonnets 135 and 136 offered the exuberant pun-fest on Will's name, and Sonnets 137 and 138 then more soberly reflected on the mutual arrangement between William Shakespeare and his mistress to accommodate each other's flaws.
Sonnet 139 now occupies a curious halfway house between the specific and the generic. The mistress has been properly introduced by now as a woman who is unconventionally beautiful, and although Shakespeare in Sonnet 137 refers to hers as "so foul a face," he also acknowledges that his eyes are now captivated by her, much as his heart cannot help but love her even though it knows she is entirely unfaithful to him.
The notion of her making eyes at other men while out in public with Shakespeare is therefore not far-fetched: it matches the portrayal we have received of her so far.
That said, the poem sits so firmly in the tradition of the sonnet lamenting the lover's longing for a release from the love pain administered to him by his cruel mistress's darting eyes that if ever there was another sonnet of which we could say that it might simply be a riff on the Petrarch-Sidneyan conceit, here furnished with a double volta for flourish, then this could quite conceivably be it.
There are many, many of Shakespeare's Sonnets that impress, excite, and delight us with their originality, their depth, their heartfelt truth so passionately expressed, their sauciness, their wisdom, their bold claim to a love that is all Shakespeare's own — and Sonnet 139 is really not one of them. It would be disingenuous, nay sycophantic, to pretend otherwise.
But there is one thing that is once again striking about this sonnet and that therefore merits highlighting, as it speaks of an unusually progressive, arguably grown-up, attitude on the part of Shakespeare to his promiscuous mistress: he once again does not ask her to change her ways when it comes to conducting her love life. He does not beg or request or demand fidelity. The essence of this sonnet is: I know you have other lovers, so be it, just don't play games with me when we're together: when you're with me, please focus on me, have sex with me, and I shall be content.
That, if you are going to love and/or desire a woman who categorically does not offer you monogamy sounds like a perfectly reasonable stance. And the poem that follows, Sonnet 140, will pursue the matter much in a similar vein...
The initial plea with the mistress is simple and straightforward: I know you have other men, so when you are with me, just tell me to my face that this is the case, rather than flirting with them with furtive glances. Having devoted the octave – the eight lines of the first two quatrains – of his sonnet to this principal argument, he then uses the sestet – the six lines of the final quatrain and the closing couplet – to propose a somewhat sophistic excuse for his mistress's behaviour, allowing for the fanciful idea that she divert her devastating looks to other men so as to spare him additional suffering, which, he finally resolves she shouldn't do, since he'd rather 'die' – at least metaphorically – than be left in limbo.
When discussing Sonnet 127, the first of the Dark Lady Sonnets in the collection of 1609, we became aware of two things: firstly, that that poem showed noticeable similarities to Sidney's Sonnet 7, and secondly that in its overall tone and stance it was fairly generic: it sounded rather uninvolved and could – more than many of the other sonnets, we felt – have been written about practically any woman with black eyes, making a point mostly about what the world used to consider 'fair', as in beautiful, in the olden days and now apparently no longer seemed to do.
With Sonnet 128 too we noted that it "is one of those poems that could, in theory, be written by almost anyone to anyone," since it used the poetic trope of a lover envying his mistress's instrument for the tender touches it receives from her, but did not further characterise the woman in question.
Sonnet 129 offered a minor diatribe on the true dreadfulness of sex if looked at from a rational perspective, and the famous Sonnet 130 more than anything mocked other poets' eulogising of their mistresses in a subtly ironic tone that presented William Shakespeare's mistress as very much human, compared to the supposed goddesses other poets elect to go on about.
It was with Sonnet 131 that we first got a sense of the mistress in question being 'dark' not only in her appearance but also in her deeds. Sonnet 132 briefly reverted to the theme of the lover who deserves pity from his mistress for the pining he must do for her, but Sonnets 133 and 134 left us in no doubt that certainly from Shakespeare's point of view his mistress exercising dark intentions was absolutely the case, seeing that she had seduced – if he is at all to be believed – his young lover.
Sonnets 135 and 136 offered the exuberant pun-fest on Will's name, and Sonnets 137 and 138 then more soberly reflected on the mutual arrangement between William Shakespeare and his mistress to accommodate each other's flaws.
Sonnet 139 now occupies a curious halfway house between the specific and the generic. The mistress has been properly introduced by now as a woman who is unconventionally beautiful, and although Shakespeare in Sonnet 137 refers to hers as "so foul a face," he also acknowledges that his eyes are now captivated by her, much as his heart cannot help but love her even though it knows she is entirely unfaithful to him.
The notion of her making eyes at other men while out in public with Shakespeare is therefore not far-fetched: it matches the portrayal we have received of her so far.
That said, the poem sits so firmly in the tradition of the sonnet lamenting the lover's longing for a release from the love pain administered to him by his cruel mistress's darting eyes that if ever there was another sonnet of which we could say that it might simply be a riff on the Petrarch-Sidneyan conceit, here furnished with a double volta for flourish, then this could quite conceivably be it.
There are many, many of Shakespeare's Sonnets that impress, excite, and delight us with their originality, their depth, their heartfelt truth so passionately expressed, their sauciness, their wisdom, their bold claim to a love that is all Shakespeare's own — and Sonnet 139 is really not one of them. It would be disingenuous, nay sycophantic, to pretend otherwise.
But there is one thing that is once again striking about this sonnet and that therefore merits highlighting, as it speaks of an unusually progressive, arguably grown-up, attitude on the part of Shakespeare to his promiscuous mistress: he once again does not ask her to change her ways when it comes to conducting her love life. He does not beg or request or demand fidelity. The essence of this sonnet is: I know you have other lovers, so be it, just don't play games with me when we're together: when you're with me, please focus on me, have sex with me, and I shall be content.
That, if you are going to love and/or desire a woman who categorically does not offer you monogamy sounds like a perfectly reasonable stance. And the poem that follows, Sonnet 140, will pursue the matter much in a similar vein...
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If you spot a mistake or if you have any comments or suggestions, please use the contact page to get in touch.
To be kept informed of developments, please subscribe to the email list.
If you would like to donate, you can do so here. Thank you!