Shakespeare Sonnet 129 Analysis

Shakespeare’s successful career continued to grow rapidly as his 154 sonnets were published. As more people read deeper into the sonnets there have been multiple theories on who Shakespeare was writing about specifically in the sonnets. For example, with the first sonnet up to sonnet 126 the poet introduces the “fair youth” which the reader can then infer that the poet might be talking about a male. However, the dark lady is introduced in sonnet 127, and then brought up again in sonnet 128. However in sonnet 128 the dark lady is being described by Shakespeare as very beautiful. These sonnets lead to sonnet 129 which discusses Shakespeare’s point of view on lust. The actions that come with lust or even taking about lust can make a person feel guilty and have hatred because the actions may have been enjoyed at first but ends up being something they regret for the rest of their life due to it being a sin. To start off the first …show more content…
Shakespeare says all of this in a not so tense tone as the first quatrain it seems like the poets anger is decreasing as he writes his feelings out. The poet is coming to realization that the sexual action never really happened but it is just a memory. However, Shakespeare “opens with two carefully balanced oppositions ("Enjoy 'd . . . despised"; "Past reason hunted . . . Past reason hated"), and although the second is then thrown off by a run-on clause, the shift in syntax and rhythm is much less drastic than in the first quatrain,” which proves his tone has calmed down (Levin par 3). The opposites are in this sonnet to show that you have to have one bad feeling to have a good feeling to follow it up. Line 8 is different from the rest of the second quatrain because it starts to talk about how lust makes a person mad due to the longing fulfillment and the feelings that come after it is