Language is effectively employed to illustrate the persona’s deep abhorrence of sexual acts. The torrent of adjectives describing the build up of desire facilitates the reader to perceive the persona’s extraordinary detestation. ‘Perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,/savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;’ The connotations associated with each of these words is twofold and readers can safely assume that Shakespeare did not limit himself to one particular meaning. For instance the use of ‘Perjured’ may signal to the readers that lust thrives on empty promises and vows, while at the same time it may also indicate inevitable doom. ‘Bloody’ refers to lust’s willingness to shed blood to attain its object and also subtly reminds the modern reader that for the Renaissance a mere abundance of blood makes one amorous. ‘Savage’ ‘rude’ and ‘cruel’ are all linked and imply a lack of civilised values and recklessness. The word ‘extreme’ may imply not only the highest degree of desire but also refer to the moral boundaries against which society is constantly battering. The repulsion of sexuality is most keenly felt in the first two quatrains; towards the end a sense of resignation has replaced furious indignation. Yet while the reader is capable of perceiving the subtle change in tone, the hatred for sexuality has not been dissipated, merely muted.
The personification of Lust and the sequential connections to animal imagery reiterate the persona’s revulsion for sexual acts. Lust in operation is a shameful waste of one’s physical and spiritual substance but until it is satisfied it deprives man of his integrity and reduces him to the level of an animal. Lust’s two timing nature is embodied in the phrase: ‘Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight.’ The line is expanded by the following two lines ‘Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,/Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,’ which serve to intensify the ensuing revulsion.
The parallel structure in these two lines explains that the subsequent hatred is as irrational as the original pursuit. Reason is the limit or natural boundary which has been violated by extreme desire. The ‘swallowed bait’ is a metaphor for mankind who is unaware that this temporary delight will bring lasting shame. The ‘bait’ causes the fish to react in a frenzied fashion akin to madness. Although bait is a term applied to any poisoned or hooked morsel to entrap an animal, Shakespeare however, uses it mainly with reference to angling.
Continuing with the extended metaphor, readers are conscious that having anticipated the solid food of satisfaction, the lustful man only gets what later seems to be a moment of pleasure deliberately set out to make him mad. The bait has been swallowed and yet another has become a Victim of Lust’s merciless rampage. ‘Mad in pursuit and in possession so;’ refers forward to ‘Had, having, and in quest to have extreme;’ which summarizes the extremism of the lustful man before, during and after satisfaction. Now hope has gone. The trapped expend the last of their vital energies in paroxysms of rage but to no avail. Shakespeare explains through these analogies that the pleasure of action is insubstantial and fleeting: ‘bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe.’ Readers at this stage will be aware that ‘in proof’ is related to ‘having’ and ‘proved’ to ‘had’. The sense of capture, the crumbling of the spirit in a futile struggle is embodied in ‘Before, a joy proposed; behind a dream.’ The punctuation in this line is indicative of the changes that are wrought during the passage of time. All that is left of the lustful man’s cravings is a dream, a ‘froth of fleeting joy’ as Shakespeare himself says in Lucrece.
The intensity of hatred in this powerful sonnet is brought to a climax in the last two lines: ‘All this world well knows; yet none knows well/ To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.’ The phrase completes and contradicts the first part of the line by emphatic use of chiasmus. This interpretation; however, is overruled by the sense and syntax demanded by the last line. The main sense of ‘knows’ refers to awareness. ‘Heaven’ is linked to women and the pleasures of sexual relations, while ‘hell’ to the extreme and generally painful emotional locus of enjoyment.
William Shakespeare’s infamous Sonnet 129 takes its reader through the full gamut of emotions. This complex, powerful and graphic poem transforms the sensuality of Sonnet 128 into outright lust and post-coital guilt, charged by the swirling torrent of emotions that lust can generate.
In Sonnet 129, Shakespeare forcefully denounces lust through technical sophistication and passionate eloquence, thus enabling his readers to perceive the soul’s moral anguish at such sinful violations.
