Sonnet 147 by Shakespeare

In William Shakespeare's Sonnet 147, the poet describes his love for the addressee of the sonnet as a 'fever'. His reason and lust have been at war, but lust has ignored all advice and now all is lost. The poet is becoming mad with passion for a lady whom he knows is no good for him. He had convinced himself the one he loved was good when the opposite was true.

Context
Sonnet 147 falls in the realm of the Dark Lady sonnets (Sonnets 127-154). It falls towards the end of the Dark Lady sequence. These sonnets, unlike the sonnets which refer to the young man, are typically angrier and are usually referring to either the Dark Lady specifically, her relationship with the speaker, or the love triangle between the speaker, the Dark Lady, and her additional lovers. In the second grouping of sonnets in which sonnet 147 falls, the speaker’s feelings toward to dark lady change several times. Sonnet 147 is another turning point in which the speaker reverts back to anger towards the Dark Lady. There are several theories as to who the Dark Lady actually is, if not a fictional character, however there is no substantial “proof” to allow these theories to be considered truth.

Towards the end of the sonnets, beginning at Sonnet 147, the speaker returns to his previously disturbed state. The image of feeding within sonnet 147 is a continuation of imagery begun in sonnet 146. In Sonnet 147, the image of feeding changes from feeding death to feeding illness. In fact, as to the image of "Feeding", Fred Blick has demonstrated that Sonnets 146 and 147 are influenced by the correspondingly numbered Psalms 146 and 147 and that they are designed as a pair. In the case of Sonnet 146 this influence is found in the vocative address to the "soul", in the synchronous correspondence of argument of Psalm and Sonnet relating to "Feeding" and in the remedying of ills. In the case of Sonnet 147 unhealthy "Feeding" and the healing of love "as a fever" brought on by fatal "Desire" which "Phisick did except", is seen in Psalm 147's "feeding the young ravens" (carrion feeding ravens, symbolic of Death) and in "medicine" for the "broken in heart" (see Psalm 147 verses 3 and 9).

Sexuality
Like many of the sonnets written by Shakespeare, sonnet 147 was written to or about the Dark Lady. There’s an obvious sexual tone to the sonnet. A jolted lover is describing their inability to stop loving their mistress, who has not seemed to remain faithful. The sonnet itself seems to be sexually ambiguous, there is no reference to gender, so one could argue that this sonnet is homoerotic or heterosexually based, but due to the couplet describing someone “...black as hell, as dark as night”, the general consensus is that this sonnet was written to or about the Dark Lady.

Analysis and Criticism of Lines 1-8
Robert Appelbaum is a critic who wrote an article on Sonnet 147 in The Greenwood Companion to Shakespeare. The following is his prose paraphrase of the first two quatrains in order to better understand Shakespeare’s language:

“My love is like a fever; it keeps longing for the thing that strokes it and only makes it worse; it feeds on what makes it sick in order to gratify a volatile, pathological appetite. My rational mind, which would act as a physician and cure me of this morbid love, is angry because its prescriptions have not been followed, and so it has abandoned me. In a desperate condition, I now find by experience that desire, which rejected medicine (or which medicine proscribed), is death”

Appelbaum begins by discussing that the first quatrains are entirely subjective in outlook and the poem develops metaphysical ideas, similar to the poems of John Donne. “It dramatizes a condition of the inner life, at once physical and mental, through which an individual has failed to prevent himself from falling in to the extreme, unhealthy madness of love ”. He argues there are statements that each dominate the quatrain in which it appears. The statement he talks about in the first quatrain is:

“My love is like a fever.” Appelbaum suggest that like a fever, this is a love that burns. More importantly, this statement addresses the pre-modern medicine belief that fevers didn’t happen because of an infectious pathogen, but because of something that was eaten. The feverous subject continues to desire this food that made it sick, even though to consume more of this product makes the disease worse.

The statement that dominates the second quatrain is, “My reason has left me.” Appelbaum explains this as because the speaker’s reason has left him, he cannot keep himself from continuing to feed on the cause of his illness- and the idea of death approaches.

Therefore, Appelbaum concludes that these quatrains “develop the idea of a man who, having contracted a pathological condition, has spun out of control, in the course of which a truth that is not truth at all begins to form in his mind: “desire is death"

Next, he examines the idea of the divided self. He says that one of the most interesting aspects of the sonnet is what if offers to the psychology of inward experience that was taken for granted in Shakespeare’s time. There are two instances of the divided self. First, the poet is divided from his own passion. “This is a division of the self where love and desire are experienced like an illness, and the illness itself experienced like a gluttonous fever”. Then he spent time discussing the idea of eating something “cold.” He writes, “In medicine of Shakespeare’s time, a fever could be triggered by eating something too “cold,” though not necessarily something cold in a literal sense; it may be a question of something “cold” in a medical, analogical sense. The body would heat up (literally) in order to compensate for this “coldness.” But as the body was heated up, the individual might then crave to eat more of the “cold” substance to cool himself, though the effect would only be to trigger more eat. So a deprived or “sickly appetite” would be avaricious for a substance that would seem to make the individual better but could only make the individual worse”. The speaker asserts that this is what love is like. The speaker desires more and more of the person that makes him sick with love, and “feeding” on this love-object ends up making him sicker.

However, as the speaker gets sicker with passion for a love that is harmful, his reason is still able to tell him to stop. The second instance of the divided self is a division between one’s rational mind and one’s passionate behavior. The rational mind can prescribe a treatment for the passion, for instance, tell it to stop eating, but the passion is too strong and continues. The speaker believes that his reason can actually get angry and abandon him, making him desperate. However, he’s still conscious enough to recognize the most stunning idea of the poem that “desire is death.”

Appelbaum says Shakespeare’s thoughts of the rational mind vs. passion foreshadow Freud’s later idea of the conflict between Eros and Thanatos (or the life drive vs. the death drive) and the Ego surrendering to the Id, while disregarding the wisdom of the Superego.

Helen Vendler also looked at Sonnet 147 in The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. In her criticism, she focused mostly on the language and word choice of the sonnet. Her ideas are that certain parallels in rhythm “foreground” conceptual resemblances. For example, the subject phrase “my reason” matches rhythmically and positionally its verb phrase “hath left me.” At the same time, “Desire is death” matches its parallel which is “past cure I am.” She argues that the alliterating chain of words disease, desperate, desire, death, discourse, dark tells the story of the poem.

She discusses that the paradox of the sonnet is that the “madman” is in actuality perfectly clear about what the truth is. Because of this, we cannot believe him when he tells us that Reason has left him.

Carl Atkins provided his criticism of Sonnet 147 in Shakespeare’s Sonnets with Three Hundred Years of Commentary.” He notes that the first quatrain is an extended simile of a patient with a fever, keeping himself ill with things he doesn’t really like. This does not follow according to Atikins, because any cure “based on the theory of the four humors would forbid a feverish patient food”. This is based on the modern proverb, “feed a cold and starve a fever.” The simile continues with Reason acting as a physician and the patient ignoring his own damage.

Atkins describes that lines 7 and 8 have caused some difficulty of interpretation because the phrase “I desperate now approve” is unclear. He and other scholars such as Dowden interpret “I desperate” as “I, who am desperate.” Some critics such as Schmidt defines “approve” as “experience,” but other critics argue against this because there is little basis for that in Shakespeare.

The line “Desire is Death” (line 8) is central to the poem. It should be noted that there is a biblical reference here, as Romans 8:6 reads: “For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” This simply means that if one follows the appetites and passions of the body, death will come, but if one is spiritual they will live peacefully. The speaker in Sonnet 147 is preoccupied and “mad” with passion, which according to the bible, will lead to death. As to Sonnets 146 and 147 considered as a pair, Fred Blick (see above) has pointed out that "Desire" in Sonnet 147 is on one side of a metaphorical equarion. On the other side stand the "rebel powers" of 146. The speaker's "soul" of 146 and "mind" of 147 are afflicted by "rebel powers" and "Desire" respectively. These afflictions are equivalent to "Death" which "Phisick" and "terms devine" could forestall.

Analysis and Criticism of Lines 9-14
Continuing Applebaum’s Modern English prose paraphrase,

I am past being cured; my rational mind that should cure me is past caring for me. I am frantically mad, ever unable to seep. My thoughts and words are like a madman’s, at odds with the truth and poorly articulated. For I have sworn that you are fair, and have regarded you as beautiful physically and morally, although you are “as black as hell, as dark as night”

Vendler has an interesting way to look at this sonnet which most all critics see as a decent into madness. She notices the etymology of the words used in the quatrains vs. the couplet, seeing a distinctly “elaborate Latinity of diagnosis and explanation” in the quatrains, and a “predominantly Anglo-Saxon lexicon” in the couplet. This decent can be seen as a devolution

Latin is the language of science, and the narrator begins as very diagnostic. However, in his lashing out in the couplet, he puts the more base words, the words of true emotion that were not overrun by the Latin language influence, into play.

Vendler also sees the dichotomy of the first person self-referential tone of the quatrains and the second person exclamations in the second quatrain the couplet “departs from the self-referential tone.” This tone is very important as Vendler makes the assertion that the narrator is not mad. The narrator abandons his hope and reason, not the other way around.

“He says he knows what Reason says, but he no longer cares to observe its mandates.” He also describes his actions as like those of a madman. This Narrator has given up on civilized life, instead agreeing to rule himself by his emotions, after he forced his Reason out.

Vendler further backs up her claim by noting the rhyme structure in the couplet, “perfect symbolic blance—6, 4, 6, 4” Vendler sees this as a perfect example of “madness’ of thought and protection.”

Stephen Booth, who writes with a language-based approach, has one very interesting note. He says three lines reflect popular proverbs. Two Shakespeare uses include “Frantic mad with unrest” and proverb states, “Desire has no rest.” Along with “Black as hell” being a common descriptor in Shakespear’s time.

But the most interesting was Shakespeare's use of “Past cure, past care.” Meaning a sickness that could not be cured should not be thought about. However, “Shakespeare is here not merely reproducing the proverb, but playing with it, for he has here inverted it. The case is past cure because the physician has ceased to care.”