Sonnets | The Dark Lady

In the first excerpt, Philip Edwards, in seeking an explanation for the different moods and tones in Sonnets 127-52, proposes that these reflect the Poet's struggle to exorcise his feelings of hopelessness by expressing them in verse. In Edwards' judgment, the Dark Lady represents carnal love—a debilitating and contaminating passion that degrades the Poet and imperils his soul. In the second excerpt, S. Schoenbaum, noting that most of what has been written about the Dark Lady is speculation, summarizes what the sonnets themselves tell us about the Dark Lady—little, he points out, from the mostly enigmatic clues in Sonnets 127-52. Schoenbaum also discusses Sonnets 153 and 154, where he finds a suggestion that the speaker has contracted a venereal disease as a result of his affair with the Dark Lady.

As many critics have pointed out, Sonnets 127-52 generally portray the speaker's mistress in a disparaging way. J. B. Leishman noted that not only does the Poet despise her, he loathes himself for loving this woman who has enslaved his young friend. Philip Edwards compared the warm and charming description of the woman in Sonnet 130 with the subsequent depiction of her as "an agent of damnation" from whom the speaker turns away in disgust. By comparison, John Klause argued that the Poet continues to desire her despite his revulsion, and their...

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