THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN’S MAN 221
No. 147 makes the point bluntly:
“For I have sworn thee fair, and
thought thee bright, / Who art as
black as hell, as dark as night.”
The poet’s complicated
relationship with love is explored
in the sonnets. In No. 149, the poet
abases himself before the beloved:
“Canst thou, O cruel, say I love
thee not / When I against myself
with thee partake?” In No. 147, he
writes with self-disgust of his
enthrallment to someone he feels is
unworthy of him: “My love is as a
fever, longing still / For that which
longer nurseth the disease.”Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring barque,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.No. 129 expresses shame at
having yielded to lustful desire:
“Th’expense of spirit in a waste
of shame / Is lust in action.”
However, there is also celebration
of bodily desires. In No. 146, the
poet writes that the soul can be
enriched by bodily decay: “Then,
soul, live thou upon thy servant’s
loss, / Buy terms divine in selling
hours of dross.” In No. 151, he says
with exultant obscenity that: “thou
betraying me, I do betray / My
nobler part to my gross body’s
treason. / My soul doth tell my body
that he may / Triumph in love; flesh
stays no farther reason, / But rising
at thy name doth point out thee /
As his triumphant prize.” ❯❯In 2009, American director Robert
Wilson and Canadian songwriter Rufus
Wainwright produced a pop-opera,
setting 25 of Shakespeare’s sonnets (in
German) to a variety of musical styles.