Sonnet 142: Love Is My Sin, and Thy Dear Virtue Hate
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Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate,
Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving. O but with mine compare thou thine own state, And thou shalt find it merits not reproving, Or if it do, not from those lips of thine That have profaned their scarlet ornaments And sealed false bonds of love as oft as mine, Robbed others' beds' revenues of their rents. Be it lawful, I love thee as thou lovest those Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee, Root pity in thy heart that when it grows, Thy pity may deserve to pitied be. If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide, By self-example mayst thou be denied. |
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Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate,
Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving. |
My sin lies in my love for you and, as is strongly implied, in my putting that love into physical practice with you or at the very least desiring as much; and your virtue is apparent in your hatred of this sin, presumably, and as other sonnets have suggested, at least sometimes leading to a rejection of this love, which is sinful because it entails me being unfaithful to my wife in the first and, morally speaking, most important instance, and also to my male lover, although that relationship in itself, in the religious context of the time, would have been considered sinful.
The fact that the mistress's virtue is described as 'dear' ostensibly suggests that she holds this virtue of hers dear and sets great store by it, but in view of what has preceded this sonnet, and in particular also of what follows, there is quite likely to be a note of irony, if not indeed sarcasm, fully intended here... |
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O but with mine compare thou thine own state,
And thou shalt find it merits not reproving, |
But just compare your own situation with mine, and you will find that it, my situation, does not merit being reproached by you.
In other words: look at your own way of conducting your love life before you admonish or reject me for my supposed 'sin', the implication of course being that you yourself have committed or are indeed in the habit of committing sins at least as grave as mine. And that is exactly what our poet next expands on. ORIGINAL PRONUNCIATION: Note that in OP reproving rhymes with loving above, in a short 'o' sound similar to our 'dove'. |
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Or if it do, not from those lips of thine
That have profaned their scarlet ornaments And sealed false bonds of love as oft as mine, |
Or if my sinful love does deserve being disapproved of and chided or reproached, then certainly not from your lips which have dishonoured or disrespected, disgraced even, their own beautiful or ornamental red appearance and sealed – much as the song suggests, with a kiss – false promises of love as often as my lips have.
The reason, plainly, you are in no position to throw a proverbial stone at me is that you find yourself in a glasshouse. Editors point out that this is the only instance in all of Shakespeare's works that he describes lips as 'scarlet', and it is in fact the only instance of the word in all of the sonnets. Where he does use 'scarlet', though, it is often associated with sin and betrayal, repeatedly also in relation to clergy who wear scarlet robes: Gloucester in Henry VI Part 1 calls the Bishop of Winchester a 'scarlet hypocrite', and in Henry VIII Surrey calls Cardinal Wolsey 'thou scarlet sin', while King Richard in Henry IV associates the term with blood and speaks of 'scarlet indignation' that will result from war, and in The Rape of Lucrece, Lucrece recounts the 'scarlet lust' of her attacker, Tarquin. Also, a traditional seal on a bond or other legal document, such as a marriage contract, would of course have been scarlet red. |
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Robbed others' beds' revenues of their rents.
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We both have given what is due to other people's beds, namely our sexual attention which in your case is due to your husband's bed and in my case to my wife's bed, to other people and thus robbed our spouses of what is rightly theirs.
The choice of words here is a little unusual, since we would not ordinarily think of the bed of our husband or wife to be due rent from us paid in sex, but it does emphasise and remind us somewhat that in Shakespeare's day marriage was very often a far more transactional, indeed economically driven arrangement than we mostly aspire to today. PRONUNCIATION: Note that in order for the line to scan perfectly, revenues needs to be stressed on the second syllable here: [re-ven-ues]. |
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Be it lawful, I love thee as thou lovest those
Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee, |
If it be allowed, or perhaps more pertinently, if you will allow me, since it clearly isn't lawful in that sense, at least not in the eye of God so far as the church is concerned: I love you just as you love those whom you woo or flirt with with your eyes, while my eyes beg or persistently pursue you.
Although Shakespeare makes a distinction here between the mistress's 'wooing' of her other lovers and his own sexually more insistent 'importuning' of her, this may be slightly mischievous so as not to say disingenuous, since clearly her interest in her lovers is no less sexual than his in her. PRONUNCIATION: Note that in order for the line to scan perfectly with line 11 below, Be it here should be pronounced as one syllable: [beit]. |
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Root pity in thy heart that when it grows,
Thy pity may deserve to pitied be. |
Plant pity in your heart, so that when this pity grows it may deserve to be pitied by others. The implication is that she, who has, as he tells us in Sonnets 140 and 141, a 'proud heart', may one day need pity herself, when her own state has turned pitiful: 'thy pity' here flips from the pity she has for him to her own need for pity, to her own pitiful state.
The pity the poet seeks for himself here, meanwhile, is of course, as on previous occasions – Sonnets 111 and 112 in relation to the Fair Youth, and Sonnets 132 and 140 in relation to the Dark Lady all spring to mind – one he hopes she will express by having sex with him. |
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If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide,
By self-example mayst thou be denied. |
If you seek, implied is in others, what you yourself hide, implied is from me, namely, as is also implied, sex, then by the example that you yourself set through your own behaviour you may yet be denied what you yourself wish for, with the implication here being not so much that Shakespeare would deny her sex, which on every account so far he seems unlikely to do, but that the day will come when she will be scorned by men just as she now scorns him, for whatever reason...
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With Sonnet 142 William Shakespeare picks up on the notion of 'sin' employed in the last line of the previous sonnet, and now juxtaposes this sin or sinful love of his for his mistress with her supposed 'virtue' in rejecting this love for being sinful, while simultaneously undermining any suggestion that she is in fact virtuous by asking her to just take a long, hard look at herself and her own behaviour, from which she will readily recognise that it is just as bad, if not in fact much worse.
The sonnet thus continues the poet's double-edged approach to wooing his mistress, by on the one hand expressing his wish to have sex with her, while on the other hand also mildly rebuking her for having sex with other men, or, to be more precise, while refusing to be rebuked by her for wanting to have sex with her, when she herself is liberally sleeping around, to put this in a polite turn of phrase.
Sonnet 142 is in many ways a simple continuation of Sonnet 141, and it also sets the ground for Sonnet 143. It thus forms something of a bridge between a poem that declares the mistress to be full of faults, yet still positions the poet as entirely in her power and being rewarded for his sinful love with pain, to a sonnet that will draw a near comical comparison between him as the person chasing his mistress who is chasing some other man or other men, with a child who cries for his mother who in turn goes after a runaway chicken.
When on previous occasions we have found ourselves asking the question, what brings this on, we in the case of this triad of sonnets are left in relatively little doubt as to the situation that is being portrayed: William Shakespeare seems to be finding himself attracted to, also repelled by, but nonetheless desirous of his mistress who is giving him reasons, by the sounds of it of a sanctimonious kind, why she won't have sex with him, while she herself is in pursuit of sex elsewhere.
What is interesting, because new, in this sonnet is the introduction of a cautionary note, not that the mistress may one day face the judgment of God, or the censure of society, or – as the previous sonnet seemed to suggest – suffer the consequence of catching some deplorable disease, but that she herself may be turned down by the person or people she pursues. This idea too will find its way into the next sonnet with its feathered creature that breaks away from her.
The question that our curiosity elicits in an instant is of course: whom is she chasing? And who would be so bold as to turn her down? Formidable as she appears to be. The field of potential candidates is so wide open that it doesn't warrant speculating about, not least since we can't be at all certain about who she herself is, but what presents itself as a particularly poignant possibility, naturally, is that Shakespeare may here always be referring to his young man.
We know – rather: we come as close to knowing as we can know almost anything when it comes to these sonnets – that the Dark Lady winds up seducing the Fair Youth. We think – and this is even more conjectural, but there are moments in these sonnets that do suggest as much, repeatedly – that the Fair Youth's acquaintance with the Dark Lady comes about through William Shakespeare, and that quite possibly she, when they do get it together, to him is "wilful taste of what thyself refusest," as Shakespeare puts it in Sonnet 40. If that's the case, then the suggestion is that the young man does not until now normally pursue women and is being enticed by her, the Dark Lady, to give this new sexual flavour a try.
In such a constellational scenario, this sonnet would find itself at a point in the proceedings where the Dark Lady is obviously and in full view of Shakespeare pursuing not just any other men but his young lover. Sonnets 133 and 134 though already established the young man having been seduced by her as a fact. And this then in turn would mean that either Sonnet 142 or these other two sonnets are placed in the collection out of sequence, which is of course entirely possible.
Also possible is that Shakespeare, in spite of what Sonnet 134 declares with its opening line, "So now I have confessed that he is thine,"
does not actually know for certain how far the two have gone, but that he lives, much as the exceptionally explicit Sonnet 144 will admit,
in doubt,
Till my bad angel fire my good one out.
The good angel of that sonnet being "a man right fair," and the bad angel "a woman coloured ill."
I have often in this podcast cautioned against reading these sonnets in isolation or out of context or both, and I continue to do so. And these three sonnets are an excellent example to illustrate why. Each on its own yields very little beyond, in each case, a curious sense of dissatisfaction and disorientation on the part of our poet. As a triad the picture becomes much more complete and also more nuanced. Instead of pinpricks on the fabric of time, we already get threads that connect the incidents and emotions together in what turns out to be quite a coherent way. Woven into context though, in this case here of what then follows with Sonnet 144 and what has gone before in the revelatory group of sonnets numbered 33 through 42, we get a veritable tapestry of experiences and emotions, of relational vectors and directional desires, and near proof, as a result, that these sonnets speak of real world characters in real life situations. If not proof, perhaps, since that is virtually impossible to come by, incredibly strong confirmation of our supposition that this type of poetry in this kind of constellation will have a cause that is lived, rather than merely imagined.
Not that William Shakespeare could not possess the imagination to make all this up. But then we would not only have to ask ourselves why would he do so, we would in addition have to demand to know why someone like Henry Willobie, whom we discussed in the previous episode with the previous sonnet, as well as with Sonnet 36, would make up stories that just about tally with these: why would some random stranger occupy himself with what sounds like gossip that was in fact made up, if the poet were himself simply making things up. Unless – and this is a possibility that can't be entirely ruled out either, though it is just a tad more adventurous – our Will teases the world around him by putting into circulation a fantasy of a triangular relationship, which then gets picked up by his pamphleteer contemporary and taken for the truth and dispersed as such under the guise of scandal, principally, one imagines, for his own amusement and/or financial profit.
What I have often in this podcast also urged towards, and continue to do, is to accept that in the absence of certainty, likelihood is our friend. And if there is one thing that these sonnets in their unequivocal curiosity may serve to do, it is to raise the level of likelihood with which we may consider them to be the result of an actual agitation of Shakespeare's heart and soul, rather than mere playfulnesses of his mind.
Sonnet 143 will – as already mentioned – provide some near comic relief before we get to the astonishing Sonnet 144 and then there is effectively a short break in transmission with an entirely different tone being struck in a different format to most likely an entirely different person...
The sonnet thus continues the poet's double-edged approach to wooing his mistress, by on the one hand expressing his wish to have sex with her, while on the other hand also mildly rebuking her for having sex with other men, or, to be more precise, while refusing to be rebuked by her for wanting to have sex with her, when she herself is liberally sleeping around, to put this in a polite turn of phrase.
Sonnet 142 is in many ways a simple continuation of Sonnet 141, and it also sets the ground for Sonnet 143. It thus forms something of a bridge between a poem that declares the mistress to be full of faults, yet still positions the poet as entirely in her power and being rewarded for his sinful love with pain, to a sonnet that will draw a near comical comparison between him as the person chasing his mistress who is chasing some other man or other men, with a child who cries for his mother who in turn goes after a runaway chicken.
When on previous occasions we have found ourselves asking the question, what brings this on, we in the case of this triad of sonnets are left in relatively little doubt as to the situation that is being portrayed: William Shakespeare seems to be finding himself attracted to, also repelled by, but nonetheless desirous of his mistress who is giving him reasons, by the sounds of it of a sanctimonious kind, why she won't have sex with him, while she herself is in pursuit of sex elsewhere.
What is interesting, because new, in this sonnet is the introduction of a cautionary note, not that the mistress may one day face the judgment of God, or the censure of society, or – as the previous sonnet seemed to suggest – suffer the consequence of catching some deplorable disease, but that she herself may be turned down by the person or people she pursues. This idea too will find its way into the next sonnet with its feathered creature that breaks away from her.
The question that our curiosity elicits in an instant is of course: whom is she chasing? And who would be so bold as to turn her down? Formidable as she appears to be. The field of potential candidates is so wide open that it doesn't warrant speculating about, not least since we can't be at all certain about who she herself is, but what presents itself as a particularly poignant possibility, naturally, is that Shakespeare may here always be referring to his young man.
We know – rather: we come as close to knowing as we can know almost anything when it comes to these sonnets – that the Dark Lady winds up seducing the Fair Youth. We think – and this is even more conjectural, but there are moments in these sonnets that do suggest as much, repeatedly – that the Fair Youth's acquaintance with the Dark Lady comes about through William Shakespeare, and that quite possibly she, when they do get it together, to him is "wilful taste of what thyself refusest," as Shakespeare puts it in Sonnet 40. If that's the case, then the suggestion is that the young man does not until now normally pursue women and is being enticed by her, the Dark Lady, to give this new sexual flavour a try.
In such a constellational scenario, this sonnet would find itself at a point in the proceedings where the Dark Lady is obviously and in full view of Shakespeare pursuing not just any other men but his young lover. Sonnets 133 and 134 though already established the young man having been seduced by her as a fact. And this then in turn would mean that either Sonnet 142 or these other two sonnets are placed in the collection out of sequence, which is of course entirely possible.
Also possible is that Shakespeare, in spite of what Sonnet 134 declares with its opening line, "So now I have confessed that he is thine,"
does not actually know for certain how far the two have gone, but that he lives, much as the exceptionally explicit Sonnet 144 will admit,
in doubt,
Till my bad angel fire my good one out.
The good angel of that sonnet being "a man right fair," and the bad angel "a woman coloured ill."
I have often in this podcast cautioned against reading these sonnets in isolation or out of context or both, and I continue to do so. And these three sonnets are an excellent example to illustrate why. Each on its own yields very little beyond, in each case, a curious sense of dissatisfaction and disorientation on the part of our poet. As a triad the picture becomes much more complete and also more nuanced. Instead of pinpricks on the fabric of time, we already get threads that connect the incidents and emotions together in what turns out to be quite a coherent way. Woven into context though, in this case here of what then follows with Sonnet 144 and what has gone before in the revelatory group of sonnets numbered 33 through 42, we get a veritable tapestry of experiences and emotions, of relational vectors and directional desires, and near proof, as a result, that these sonnets speak of real world characters in real life situations. If not proof, perhaps, since that is virtually impossible to come by, incredibly strong confirmation of our supposition that this type of poetry in this kind of constellation will have a cause that is lived, rather than merely imagined.
Not that William Shakespeare could not possess the imagination to make all this up. But then we would not only have to ask ourselves why would he do so, we would in addition have to demand to know why someone like Henry Willobie, whom we discussed in the previous episode with the previous sonnet, as well as with Sonnet 36, would make up stories that just about tally with these: why would some random stranger occupy himself with what sounds like gossip that was in fact made up, if the poet were himself simply making things up. Unless – and this is a possibility that can't be entirely ruled out either, though it is just a tad more adventurous – our Will teases the world around him by putting into circulation a fantasy of a triangular relationship, which then gets picked up by his pamphleteer contemporary and taken for the truth and dispersed as such under the guise of scandal, principally, one imagines, for his own amusement and/or financial profit.
What I have often in this podcast also urged towards, and continue to do, is to accept that in the absence of certainty, likelihood is our friend. And if there is one thing that these sonnets in their unequivocal curiosity may serve to do, it is to raise the level of likelihood with which we may consider them to be the result of an actual agitation of Shakespeare's heart and soul, rather than mere playfulnesses of his mind.
Sonnet 143 will – as already mentioned – provide some near comic relief before we get to the astonishing Sonnet 144 and then there is effectively a short break in transmission with an entirely different tone being struck in a different format to most likely an entirely different person...
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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!