Sonnet CXLVII explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Lust and Morality

  The speaker's love is depicted as a feverish disease that defies reason and leads to moral and physical decay.

• Truth and Deception

  The speaker admits he has sworn the beloved fair and bright, but now sees her as black as hell, revealing self-deception and the gap between appearance and reality.

Characters to notice

• William Shakespeare

  The speaker of the sonnet, expressing his feverish and irrational love.

• Love

  Personified as a fever that consumes the speaker.

• Death

  Referenced as the outcome of desire, which reason had previously forbidden.

Key passages

• “My love is as a fever, longing still For that which longer nurseth the disease, Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill, The uncertain sickly appetite to please.”

  My love is like a fever that constantly craves what makes it worse, sustaining the sickness to satisfy a restless, unhealthy desire.

  The speaker compares his love to an illness that feeds on itself.

• “My reason, the physician to my love, Angry that his prescriptions are not kept, Hath left me, and I desperate now approve Desire is death, which physic did except.”

  My reason, which should cure my love, has abandoned me in anger because I ignored its advice, and now in desperation I accept that desire leads to death—something medicine once forbade.

  Reason is personified as a doctor who has given up on the speaker.

• “For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright, Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.”

  Because I have sworn you were beautiful and thought you were radiant, when in truth you are as black as hell and as dark as night.

  The speaker admits his previous praise was false, revealing the beloved's true nature.