Sonnet 129

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 129 is centered on the subject of lust and sexual desire. It describes lust throughout three stages in time: the events leading up the lustful act, the act itself, and then the period afterwards. The switches back and forth through these times give a sense of madness and erraticism to the poem, much like he describes lust itself. Though the poem never explicitly identifies the speaker or their relation to lust and its consequences, through the use of such explicit language when describing lust, the audience can perceive that the speaker feels passionately about lust and the importance of shunning it.

In the first line he immediately identifies the lustful action as being “the expense of spirit in a waste of shame”. This means that lustful actions as being a waste, a shameful act, and comes at the expense of spirit, which I took to mean one’s spirit as in their own dignity and morality. Also, I feel that he is describing lust not in the sense of any sexual act, but more so those pursued for simple personal physical pleasure. I do not think he would consider sex between two people as always being as bad as he describes here in this sonnet, for example, when it would lead it having children. This could lead to happiness and fulfillment in life, unlike the type of sexual deviance he describes as lust, which is empty and shameful in the end. He goes on to describe what lust is like with extremely harsh and carnal language (although not explicitly sexual), calling lust savage, extreme, bloody, and murderous, among others.

In the next quatrain he goes on to describe the actions and emotions before and after the lustful act. He states that one engaging in lust despises their self as soon as they’ve enjoyed the act, and that they will hunt for sex to a point beyond reason, and as soon as it’s happened they hate it past reason. He then describes lust as being a sort of trap designed to drive those who seek it mad. These descriptions jump back and forth between longing for lust, its fulfillment, and subsequent shame felt in remembering it.

In the third quatrain he describes how lust is madness in all three stages of time. He says it is “Mad in pursuit and in possession”, how it is extreme beyond reason: in longing for it, committing the act, and then in remembrance of the act saying “Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme”. He also switches back and forth once more in the timeline of a lustful act, how it is a “joy proposed” in longing for the act, during its experience it is “A bliss in proof”, but a “very woe” once it has finished and then becomes a dream in memory.

Finally, in the couplet at the end, Shakespeare describes the universality in lust in that everyone knows it is mad and ends in shame, yet no person knows how to avoid such shame by denouncing lust and its pursuit.