Sonnet 144 (along with Sonnet 138) was published in the Passionate Pilgrim (1599).(Gray 19) Shortly before this, Francis Meres referred to Shakespeare's Sonnets in his handbook of Elizabethan poetry, Palladis Tamia, or Wit's Treasurie, published in 1598, which was frequently talked about in the literary centers of London taverns.(De Chambrun 132) Shakespeare's sonnets are mostly addressed to a young man, but the chief subject of Sonnet 127 through Sonnet 152 is the "dark lady". Several sonnets portray a conflicted relationship between the speaker, the "dark lady" and the young man. Sonnet 144 is one of the most prominent sonnets to address this conflict.
Structure Sonnet 144 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form abab cdcd efef gg and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The 4th line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter: × / × / × / × / × / The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill.
× / × / × / × / × /(×) To win me soon to hell, my female evil (144.4-5) / = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus. (×) = extrametrical syllable.
The 5th line (scanned above) has a final extrametrical syllable or feminine ending, as does the 7th line. The 8th line exhibits a common metrical variation, an initial reversal; it potentially also features a rightward movement of the fourth ictus (resulting in a four-position figure, × × / /, sometimes referred to as a minor ionic): / × × / × / × × / / Wooing his purity with her foul pride. (144.8) Shakespeare's frequent implied emphasis of pronouns may render the second half of this line regular. Lines 6 and 8 also feature initial reversals, and line 2 potentially does. Line 11 has a potential mid-line reversal, but if a somewhat playful contrastive accent on "to" is inferred, this would render the line regular. Line 9 has a minor ionic. The first ictus of line 14 might fall on any one of the first three syllables, rendering a slightly different shade of meaning with each choice.
The meter demands that line 4's "spirit" function as one syllable, as distinct from its two-syllable appearance in line 2.
Autobiographical interpretations
Michelle Burnham adopts the nineteenth century theories that Shakespeare's sonnets contain autobiographical information about him, in order to explore the novel Ulysses. Through her examination into Joyce's use of the poems, the reader can discover the mindset of the nineteenth century Shakespeare reader. Burnham affirms that critics of the past believed that Shakespeare was caught in a love triangle between a fair boy and dark woman in her article, "'Dark Lady and Fair Man': The Love Triangle in Shakespeare's Sonnet and Ulysses".(Burnham, Michelle. "'Dark Lady and Fair Man': The Love Triangle in Shakespeare's Sonnet and Ulysses." Studies in the Novel 22.Spring (1990): 43. Print.) Stephen Booth reinforces this argument by stating that in line 7 "my saint" "is [written] in the courtly love tradition, in which poets customarily spoke about their beloveds in the manner and language of... worshipers to, or about, saints".(Shakespeare, William; Booth, Stephen. Shakespeare's Sonnets. New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1977.) Harvey Stanborough claims that Shakespeare's Sonnet 144 discusses not a bisexual relationship between the author and "a man right fair" and "a woman coloured ill", but rather it reveals Shakespeare's internal conflict as an artist. He proposes "that it was actually addressed to a much broader, general audience and is an attempted explanation of his own artistic mind".(Stanbourough, Harvey. "Shakespeare's Sonnet 144". Explicator 55.Fall (1996): 10-12. World Shakespeare Online Database. Web. 20 Oct. 2009. < http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/results/results_single_fulltext.jhtml;hwwilsonid=QRZZ0SOCQAPDNQA3DIKSFF4ADUNGIIV0>) To him, the two loves in the sonnet embody two passions which pull at Shakespeare's mind in opposing directions: "the speaker is explaining that he has two passions: a passion (desire) for comfort, and a passion (need) for despair".(Stanbourough, Harvey. "Shakespeare's Sonnet 144". Explicator 55.Fall (1996): 10-12. World Shakespeare Online Database. Web. 20 Oct. 2009. <http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/results/results_single_fulltext.jhtml;hwwilsonid=QRZZ0SOCQAPDNQA3DIKSFF4ADUNGIIV0>). He uses a less edited version of the sonnet to assert that the first line of the poem makes a clear distinction between passions rather than lovers. He uses "Two loves I have, of Comfort and Despaire" to show that the separation of the comma "contend[s] that the two loves he mentions are not people at all, but the two sides--light and dark--of his creative personality".(Stanbourough, Harvey. "Shakespeare's Sonnet 144". Explicator 55.Fall (1996): 10-12. World Shakespeare Online Database. Web. 20 Oct. 2009. <http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/results/results_single_fulltext.jhtml;hwwilsonid=QRZZ0SOCQAPDNQA3DIKSFF4ADUNGIIV0>)
Stephen Booth argues that the editing of the comma "has no effect on the logic of the line".(Shakespeare, William; Booth, Stephen. Shakespeare's Sonnets. New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1977.) Stanborough furthers his argument by "argu[ing] that he [Shakespeare] is introducing us to the good side of himself, the side that psychologists call the 'presenting self,'...Being a male, he naturally describes the 'better Angell' as masculine; he also describes it as 'right faire,'... to signify the light of goodness".(Stanbourough, Harvey. "Shakespeare's Sonnet 144". Explicator 55.Fall (1996): 10-12. World Shakespeare Online Database. Web. 20 Oct. 2009. <http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/results/results_single_fulltext.jhtml;hwwilsonid=QRZZ0SOCQAPDNQA3DIKSFF4ADUNGIIV0>)
To explain the presence of the "dark lady", Stanborough asserts that she is the good self's exact opposite: "The first was masculine, so this one is necessarily characterized as feminine; the first was 'faire,' or light, so this one is 'colour'd ill.'"(Stanbourough, Harvey. "Shakespeare's Sonnet 144". Explicator 55.Fall (1996): 10-12. World Shakespeare Online Database. Web. 20 Oct. 2009. < http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/results/results_single_fulltext.jhtml;hwwilsonid=QRZZ0SOCQAPDNQA3DIKSFF4ADUNGIIV0>) The entire argument is based in the fact that Stanborough believes that, in order to have creative insight, an artist has mental divisions between depression and joy. Booth exposes the underlying sexual nature of the poem in line 12 where it states "one angel in another's hell". He talks about the work of Ingram and Redpath when they discuss the meanings used for hell in the time Shakespeare was writing. They wrote that "several meanings appear to be present: ... such a position was often used as a pretext for a sexual tumble; 'hell' is probably also... the female sexual organ" in which case "'one angel' is the man, and 'another' is the woman" clearly engaging in sex.(Shakespeare, William; Booth, Stephen. Shakespeare's Sonnets. New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1977.)
Clara Longworth de Chambrun writes, "None who hears the cry of remorse and anguish in Shakespeare's poems can doubt that their author traversed a period of great moral suffering. The serene atmosphere of his later work seems to attest that he came through the fire tempered and ripened. The facts also sustain this hypothesis and explain his Life's Philosophy. 'Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither, ripeness is all.'"(De Chambrun, Clara L. "The Inspirers of Shakespeare's Sonnets." The North American Review 198.692 (1913): 131-34. Print.) De Chambrun describes how the W.H. theory originated. Thomas Thorpe, a "pirate publisher",(De Chambrun 132) published a volume of Shakespeare's sonnets with the following inscription, "To the onlie begetter of these sonnets, Mr. W.H."(De Chambrun 132) De Chambrun criticizes the initials and she does not believe in following the Herbertist (William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke in 1623) theory; rather she writes of "graver critics" seeing the letters standing for Will Hall, a trafficker of manuscripts and a favorite of Thorpe, the "Piratical Publisher".(De Chambrun 132). De Chambrun continues, if the Earl of Pembroke, William Herbert, was Mr. W.H., then the critics who believe the dark lady to be Mary Fitton (known mistress) would be incorrect, because Mary Fitton was a blonde.(De Chambrun 133)
Henry David Gray writes on the complexity of views that readers have had while contemplating the sonnets.(Gray, Henry Du. "Shakespeare's Last Sonnets." Modern Language Notes 32.1 (1917): 17-21. Print) The Southamptonites, who date them from 1592 to 1596, believe the first 125 are in chronological order, the dark lady is Elizabeth Vernon, and the rival poet is Drayton.(Gray 17) His next group of readers are Pembrokists, dating the sonnets from 1598 to 1603. Their dark lady is Mary Fitton and their rival poet Chapman.(Gray 17) Gray believed, following Sir Sidney Lee, that the sonnets are literary exercises, it is important to identify the dark lady, W.H. is not the youth addressed in the first 125 and they are not in chronological order; he had no idea who the rival poet is.(Gray 18) He wrote, "I am a free lance among the Sonnets' critics with a special set of conjectures all my own; though I do agree with Butler that that W.H. is William Hughes, with Acheson that the Dark Lady is Mistress Davanant, and with Montmorency that the Rival Poet is Spenser."(Gray 18)
Religious interpretations
There is a Christian element present in Sonnet 144. Shakespeare refers to the man and woman as angels. Helen Vendler believes that the boy represents salvations while the woman is sin. "Q1 offers the familiar Christian model of the better angel and the worser spirit, both prompting the speaking, but transforms these spirits into loves, and gives them names deriving from theology: comfort (salvation) and despair (the unforgivable sin). The iconographic description fair/ colored ill supports the Christian model of angel and devil."(Vendler, Helen. The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Cambridge, London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1998.P. 605) The bad angel comes between the poet and the good angel. "Q2 while beginning with the Christian presumption that the bad angel wants to win [the speaker] soon to hell, slides away from the motive in lines 7-8, as a witty new version of the old plot emerges; the bad angel loses interest in the speaker, and turns her interest to the better spirit."(Vendler, Helen. The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Cambridge, London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1998.P. 605) Sonnet 144 reflects Shakespeare's relationships with young boy and the dark lady through the use of Christian images.
Homoeroticism
Shakespeare addresses many of his sonnets to a young male, whom many have assumed to be identical with Mr. W.H., the person to whom the sonnets as a whole are dedicated. Scholars debate the nature of Shakespeare's relationship with his male companion and question whether it was a close friendship or a romantic love. The sonnets indicate that a woman who Shakespeare describes as the dark lady comes between the poet and Mr. W.H. Sonnet 144 addresses this conflict.