Poetry · Chapter
CXL explained
The speaker implores the beloved to be merciful despite their cruelty, warning that despair could drive them to madness and slander, and asks for at least the appearance of love to prevent harm.
What happens
The speaker implores the beloved to be merciful despite their cruelty, warning that despair could drive them to madness and slander, and asks for at least the appearance of love to prevent harm.
Themes in this chapter
Truth and Deception
The speaker suggests feigning love to avoid madness and slander, highlighting the tension between truth and necessary deception.
Lust and Morality
The beloved's cruelty and the speaker's desperate plea reflect the moral conflict between desire and restraint.
Characters to notice
- William Shakespeare
The speaker who pleads for mercy and warns of the consequences of disdain.
- Love
The personified beloved addressed as cruel yet desired to show love.
Key passages
“Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain;”
Be as clever as you are harsh; do not test my silent endurance with excessive scorn.
The speaker asks the beloved to show wisdom alongside cruelty, not to push their patience too far.
“Lest sorrow lend me words and words express The manner of my pity-wanting pain.”
Otherwise grief will give me the ability to speak and describe the kind of pain I suffer without pity.
The speaker warns that sorrow may force them to articulate their unrelieved suffering.
“If I might teach thee wit, better it were, Though not to love, yet, love, to tell me so;”
If I could teach you wisdom, it would be better for you to say you love me, even if you don't.
The speaker suggests that pretending to love is wiser than admitting the truth.
“As testy sick men, when their deaths be near, No news but health from their physicians know;”
Like irritable sick people near death only hear reports of good health from their doctors.
The speaker compares the beloved's comforting lies to a physician's false reassurance to a dying patient.
“For if I should despair, I should grow mad, And in my madness might speak ill of thee:”
Because if I lose all hope, I will go insane, and in my insanity I might say harmful things about you.
The speaker warns that despair could lead to madness and slander against the beloved.
“Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad, Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be.”
Now this malicious world has become so corrupt that insane liars are believed by insane listeners.
The speaker laments that society readily believes false accusations from mad people.