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Sonnet 129
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Themes
The Dangerous Nature of Lust
“Sonnet 129” is a direct warning against both the feeling of lust and the action of consummating lust. Every line in the poem focuses on the negative outcome of lust, labeling it not only an “expense” (Line 1), but also something that leads men to act “Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust” (Line 4). The speaker therefore argues that lust is filled with inherent dangers and disappointments, suggesting that it would be better to avoid it.
The speaker depicts the lustful lover as someone who is “mad” (Line 9), stressing the irrational and unrestrained nature of lust. In attributing lust to madness, the speaker depicts acting lustfully as contrary to one’s reason and self-interest. He depicts even the outcome of lust as deceitful, arguing that consummation does not bring relief to the lover, but only further pains. The lover’s lust for the beloved will quickly become “[p]ast reason hated” (Line 7, emphasis added) once consummation has been achieved, for the lover will soon realize he has merely fallen into a trap, like an animal that has “swallowed bait” (Line 7). As soon as the success of the pursuit has been “proved” (Line 11), the lover will discover that he has only gained “a very woe” (Line 11) in place of the anticipated bliss.
The speaker says that the negative feelings that come from lust occur immediately after consummation (Line 5), and the “madness” of the process never abates at any point: “Mad in pursuit and in possession so / Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme” (Lines 9-10). He makes no distinction between the pursuit of lust, the consummation of lust, and the time after the consummation—all inspire the lover to feel and act in a manner that is “extreme,” once more emphasizing the motif of irrationality. This means that whatever pleasure might be felt while lust is consummated is essentially meaningless, since it is immediately replaced by negative feelings of guilt and shame afterward, rendering it a “waste” (Line 1) in both a physical and emotional sense.
The speaker closes the sonnet by arguing that any happiness lust appears to promise is illusory: It is “a joy proposed” (Line 12) before consummation, only to be immediately transformed into “a dream” (Line 12) once experienced, rendering it intangible and void. The speaker cannot foresee any alternative outcomes, arguing that lust always leads to “hell” instead of the promised “heaven” (Line 14), suggesting that the unpleasant aftereffects are both consistent and unavoidable.
The Corrosive Moral Effects of Lust
According to the poem, lust has a morally corrosive effect upon the lover’s character and behavior. The aftereffects of lust then lead to shame and regret. The speaker therefore presents the experience of lust as not only ultimately disappointing, but harmful to the one who experiences it.
The speaker introduces this theme from the opening line of the poem, depicting consummation as “Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame” (Line 1). In calling consummation an “expense of spirit,” the speaker alludes to a common Renaissance belief that ejaculation enervated a man physically in a way that could be harmful for the body if not moderated—the lover, during consummation, is therefore discharging his “spirit,” or life forces, every time consummation takes place. The speaker regards this “expense” as a “waste” that bodes ill, leading only to “shame” instead of genuine satisfaction.
The speaker also attributes negative qualities to lust itself and to the behavior it inspires the lustful lover to undertake. He calls lust an emotion that is “perjured, murd’rous, bloody, full of blame / Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust” (Lines 3-4). The speaker thus directly contradicts popular conceptions of love and desire as something beautiful or enthralling by instead insisting that it contains only the worst of traits, such as dishonesty (“perjured”; “not to trust”), violence (“murd’rous”; “Savage”; “cruel”), a lack of integrity or worth (“full of blame”), and a lowly nature (“rude”). The speaker therefore insists that there is nothing inherently noble or worthwhile about lust as a feeling or experience.
Furthermore, for the lover who succumbs to his lust, only shame and regret await him. The speaker claims that, after consummation, the lover will only despise what he valued so much before. The speaker repeats this claim twice, first by stating that lust is “Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight” (Line 5, emphasis added) and then insisting that lust is “no sooner had” (Line 6) than “[p]ast reason hated” (Line 7, emphasis added). The use of such forceful adjectives to describe a lover’s supposed post-coital disgust—“despised” and “hated”—reinforces the idea that the lover is doomed to be “[p]ast reason” not just in how much he values the pursuit of lust before consummation, but also in how much he regrets and angrily rejects it afterwards.
The speaker’s portrait of the regretful lover therefore suggests that the “mad” behavior lustful lovers engage in is degrading for them emotionally and morally, driving them to “extreme” forms of acting and feeling. Even successfully consummated lust, the speaker insists, is always to the lover’s detriment.
The Weakness of Man
The speaker takes a cynical view of not only lust itself, but what he regards as the typical human response to it: He claims that every lover experiences lust in the same way, and that every lover is also inevitably too weak to fight it. In maintaining this cynicism throughout the poem, the speaker presents lust as both unavoidable and irresistible.
The speaker creates a sense of universality for the experience of lust by forgoing presenting lust as an individualized case. Instead of using the first-person pronoun “I” and detailing his own purported experiences, the speaker instead speaks in depersonalized absolutes. There is no specific lover or beloved in the poem, just descriptions of how “lust” functions as an emotion and the uniform effects that it has upon those who experience it: “lust / Is perjured, murd’rous, bloody, full of blame” (Lines 2-3, emphasis added). The speaker does not present any ambiguities in his portrait of lust, and he never once suggests that there could be any alternative to the experience he describes: Instead, he claims that “All [. . .] the world well knows” (Line 13, emphasis added) that lust is the way the speaker paints it, “yet none knows well” (Line 14, emphasis added) how to avoid it. In using sweeping terms such as “all the world” and “none,” the speaker stresses his belief that what he details in the sonnet is applicable to everyone, with no exceptions.
The speaker also invokes some Christian imagery in the closing couplet of the sonnet, suggesting a state of emotional damnation for everyone who experiences lust: Lust is “the heaven that leads men to this hell” (Line 14, emphasis added). In contrasting the “heaven” of men’s lustful expectations with the “hell” that is their reality, the speaker alludes to both the Biblical notions of temptation and sin while also continuing the sonnet’s motif of contrasting what lust promises versus what it actually provides. By comparing this experience of lust to the spiritual battle against damnation, Shakespeare alludes to the Christian idea that all men are weak and prone to moral failings.
Thus, in depicting all lovers as failing to learn how “to shun” (Line 14) the trappings of lust even though each “well knows” (Line 13) the inherent dangers and regrets that await them, the speaker insists that such weaknesses are an inherent part of human nature. There are neither alternative ways to experience lust nor ways to save oneself from it—it is a part of the human experience.
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