“Sonnet 141: In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes” Introduction

• "Sonnet 141" is one of the 154 poems collected as Shakespeare's Sonnets (first published in 1609). It bears some resemblance to the more famous "Sonnet 130 (My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun)." As in that poem, the speaker criticizes a woman whom he claims to love, stressing her lack of conventional beauty and charm while insisting that his "heart" belongs to her anyway. Here, however, his criticism, passion, and self-loathing are even more vehement: he claims that his "heart [...] loves what [his eyes] despise," and presents himself as helplessly under her power despite his usual tastes and better judgment. The poem depicts love as bittersweet and deeply irrational, suggesting that when the heart conflicts with the mind—and even the senses—the result is a complex tangle of pleasure and pain.

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“Sonnet 141: In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes” Summary

• To be honest, I don't love you with my eyes, because they can see a thousand flaws in you. It's my heart that loves what my eyes hate and that enjoys doting on you despite your looks. My ears aren't thrilled with your voice, either. Nor is my sense of touch pleased by your crude caresses. My senses of taste and smell wouldn't want to be invited to an erotic feast with just you. Still, neither my intellectual faculties nor my senses can stop my silly heart from yielding to you—leaving the rest of me a helpless, hollow shell as it becomes the lowly servant of your aloof heart. The only thing I've gained from this romance is my lovesickness (and/or an STI). At least the woman who convinces me to sin with her gives me the necessary punishment at the same time.

“Sonnet 141: In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes” Themes

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  The Irrationality of Love

  The speaker of Shakespeare's "Sonnet 141" loves a woman despite (supposedly) not being attracted to her. He finds her somewhat repellent, in fact, but still can't stop his "foolish heart" from "serving" her. As a result of this deep inner conflict, he expresses a passive-aggressive mix of love, loathing, and desire. He's well aware of this woman's supposed flaws, yet he can't help "sin[ning]" with her anyway. The speaker's love is irrational, yet stronger than all his other emotions (and, perhaps, his better judgment).

  For better or worse—here almost entirely for worse—the speaker is ruled by his heart. He's not attracted to his love interest's looks and even claims to find her ugly (his eyes outright "despise" this woman). The speaker declares that this woman doesn't appeal to his senses of hearing, touch, taste, or smell, either. He even implies that he finds her morally and intellectually unattractive: his "five wits" are as displeased with her as his "five senses." (The "five wits" are the intellectual faculties, as understood in Shakespeare's time: common sense, imagination, fantasy, estimation, and memory.)

  There's no part of the speaker that rationally, logically likes this woman, and it's tormenting him that he's drawn to her anyway. The implication seems to be that he loves this woman on some emotional level that he can't comprehend. And when the "heart" is invested, no matter how "foolish[ly]," nothing else can "Dissuade" a lover from persisting.

  Though the speaker says doesn't want to be exclusive with his love interest (he doesn't want to be "invited / To any sensual feast with [her] alone), he feels utterly subjected to her. He calls himself her lowly servant, or her "proud heart's slave and vassal wretch." ("Wretch" here can mean "powerless person," "miserable person," or both.) In giving only his "heart" to her, the speaker feels as if the rest of him is now hollow and fake (the "likeness of a man" rather than a real man). Since the heart is said to govern, or sway, the body, he now feels "unswayed"—disoriented and unstable.

  In short, the speaker is an emotional mess! He's "pleased to dote on" his beloved, yet disgusted with himself for doing so. If the poem places the "heart" at the center of love, it also shows the misery, confusion, and self-loathing lovers suffer when only their hearts are aligned.

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  Pleasure, Pain, and Submission

  The speaker of "Sonnet 141" takes a kind of pleasure in loving a woman he superficially "despise[s]." He also takes a kind of pride in enduring the "pain" she causes him. He says cruel things about her (and himself), but it's clear she has the upper hand in their power dynamic. He can't stop "serving" her and may not even want to. In fact, he celebrates the "plague" he's "gain[ed]" from loving her, along with the "pain" she "awards" him (and it's not clear that he's simply being sarcastic; these phrases imply that she's given him a sexually transmitted illness in addition to emotional agony!). He appears to enjoy his submissive, lovesick state, as well as whatever physical suffering he derives from her. Broadly, the poem illustrates how intense, complex romances can make pain feel like pleasure—and vice versa.

  The speaker stays invested in his relationship despite its painful and shameful elements. For example, he claims he's "pleased to dote" on his lover "in despite of view." That is, he enjoys serving her and showing her affection even though he's not attracted to her looks. He also claims that his "Only [...] gain" from the relationship has been "[his] plague," which may refer to an STI, lovesickness, or both. He grimly suggests that the "pain" she "awards" him for "sin[ning]" with her is a kind of benefit, because it will reduce his punishment in hell. (He's paying for his sins now, so he won't have to pay as much later.)

  But there are also hints that he stays in the relationship because of its painful and shameful elements. In other words, he takes a perverse kind of pleasure and pride in suffering and shame—or else he's lying about what he likes and dislikes. The speaker may be protesting too much (to use a Shakespearean phrase!) when he criticizes his beloved. He may actually find her beautiful and intelligent, despite insisting otherwise. If so, all his negative comments about her looks and character—as well as his own "foolish" love—are basically defensive.

  Alternatively, he may derive a masochistic thrill from the shame he feels when he's with her, plus the physical/emotional "pain" she makes him suffer. In other words, his remarks about "gain[ing]" sickness and pain might not be entirely sarcastic. He clearly enjoys feeling like her "vassal," or servant, on some level, because neither his "wits" (intellect) nor "senses" (superficial judgment) can convince him to abandon this power dynamic.

  It's hard to read the sonnet as a straightforward love poem, or its speaker as entirely happy with his romance. But the speaker's alleged feelings of pain, disgust, and powerlessness aren't entirely straightforward, either. Sonnet 141 is part of a longer sequence of sonnets in which Shakespeare (or his speaker) works through a messy, love-hate relationship with a woman critics have called the "Dark Lady." These poems consistently explore shame and pride, pleasure and pain, as flip sides of one another. It's complicated!

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Sonnet 141: In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes”

• Lines 1-4

  In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes,
  For they in thee a thousand errors note;
  But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise,
  Who, in despite of view, is pleased to dote;

  The poem's first four lines—the opening quatrain of the sonnet—set up a rich dramatic conflict. The speaker, addressing his lover (with the old-fashioned pronoun "thee"), declares that he loves her with his "heart" rather than his "eyes." This might sound like a sweet, if slightly left-handed, compliment—but the speaker makes it sting as much as possible.

  It's not just that he's looking beyond the superficial; it's that his eyes "despise" her. They notice "a thousand errors" whenever they look at her. He makes it sound as if he truly finds her ugly! Because "errors" can connote sin or moral error, and "sin" comes up in the poem's final line, some critics have argued that the speaker perceives and despises his lover's moral flaws. Either way, it's a harsh judgment, and it reflects a major conflict within the speaker. He's "pleased to dote" on her—enjoys showing her affection—but he does so "despite of view," or in spite of what his eyes tell him. He loves her, but he hates himself for loving her. Not only is he aware of the irony, but he's also eager to point it out, as if he's trying to flatter and wound her at the same time.

  The first words of the poem are "In faith," meaning "To be honest," but it's not clear that this speaker is telling the full truth! As the poem goes on, there are hints that he finds his lover more attractive than he claims. He may be the poetry equivalent of an unreliable narrator in fiction. In his plays, Shakespeare was a master of exploring ambiguous motives and ambivalent feelings. The speaker of his sonnets—whether or not it's literally supposed to be him—is as murky in his desires and goals as any of the characters in the plays.

• Lines 5-8

  Nor are mine ears with thy tongue's tune delighted,
  Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone,
  Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited
  To any sensual feast with thee alone:

  

  

• Lines 9-12

  But my five wits nor my five senses can
  Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,
  Who leaves unswayed the likeness of a man,
  Thy proud heart's slave and vassal wretch to be.

  

  

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• Lines 13-14

  Only my plague thus far I count my gain,
  That she that makes me sin awards me pain.

  

  

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“Sonnet 141: In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Repetition

  The poem repeats several words/phrases for the purposes of emphasis and contrast. For example, the word "heart" occurs in lines 3 and 10, and in line 12 as "heart's." Not only does the repetition stress that this is a love poem—albeit a slightly twisted one—but it also draws out the contrast between the speaker's "foolish" heart and his lover's "proud" one. This is a poem not only about the love but about the tension between hearts, as well as the tension within the speaker's own heart.

  Repetition also draws out the contrast in line 9:

  But my five wits nor my five senses can
  Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,

  In the Europe of Shakespeare's day, some thinkers believed that the five bodily senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell) had their equivalent in the mind. These five mental faculties, or "wits," were said to be common wit (i.e., common sense), imagination, fantasy, estimation (i.e., calculation), and memory. Here, the repetition-with-variation—"my five wits nor my five senses"—stresses that neither the speaker's physical perceptions nor his mental processes can help him in his lovesick state.

  Finally, the word "Nor" itself occurs several times, not only in line 9 but in the anaphora of lines 5-7:

  Nor are mine ears with thy tongue's tune delighted,
  Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone,
  Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited [...]

  In a sonnet written centuries after Shakespeare, Elizabeth Barrett Browning famously "count[ed] the ways" in which she loved her partner. Here, it's as if the speaker is counting the ways in which he doesn't love his partner! The succession of "Nor"s emphasizes that he doesn't love her through any of his senses—not hearing, nor touch, nor taste, etc. Of course, all of this sets up the claim that he does love her with his heart.

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• Metaphor

  

  
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• Alliteration

  

  

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• Personification

  

  

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• Irony

  

  

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"Sonnet 141: In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes" Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• In faith
• Thee
• Mine
• 'Tis
• In despite of
• View
• Dote
• Thy
• Tongue's tune
• Base
• Prone
• Desire
• Sensual feast
• Five wits
• Dissuade
• Unswayed
• Likeness
• Slave
• Vassal wretch
• Plague
• She

• In truth; to be honest.

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Sonnet 141: In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes”

• Form

  "Sonnet 141" is a typical Shakespearean sonnet: a poem of 14 lines, written in iambic pentameter (five-beat lines following a da-DUM, da-DUM rhythm). The 14 lines can be grouped into three quatrains (which rhyme on alternating lines) and a final rhyming couplet. This form is also known as the English or Elizabethan sonnet. Shakespeare didn't invent it, but he used it so consistently throughout his famous sonnets that it's become indelibly associated with him.

  As is conventional in the sonnet, there's a volta—a significant "turn" or transition—in the ninth line. Here, that turn is signaled by the word "But," which introduces the speaker's claim that he's hopelessly in love with his mistress despite her faults.

  After the three longer quatrains, the couplet of a Shakespearean sonnet has a pithy, punchline-like effect. Sometimes it also contains a thematic "turn" of its own. Here, the couplet builds on the bitter passion and self-loathing of the previous lines, but it introduces a slight twist: the speaker claims that all he's gotten from this relationship is a "plague." This word might refer to an STI, though it could also suggest some other physical or emotional malady, such as lovesickness. Regardless, the speaker claims he's happy to have caught it because it provides some necessary (welcome?) punishment for "sin[ning]" with his mistress.

• Meter

  Like nearly all Shakespearean sonnets, "Sonnet 141" uses iambic pentameter. This means that its lines typically contain 10 syllables arranged in an unstressed-stressed rhythm: da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM. (Some also have an unstressed eleventh syllable at the end, as in lines 5 and 7.)

  Readers can hear this rhythm clearly in lines 1-2:

  In faith, | I do | not love | thee with | mine eyes,
  For they | in thee | a thou- | sand err- | ors note;

  The rhythm contains some variations, however, as in most metrical poems. For instance, line 13 begins with a trochaic (stressed-unstressed) rather than an iambic (unstressed-stressed) foot:

  Only | my plague | thus far | I count | my gain,

  This variation heightens the emphasis on "Only"—appropriately enough, since the speaker wants to stress that a "plague" is the only thing he's gotten from this romance.

• Rhyme Scheme

  The poem uses the standard rhyme scheme of the English, or Shakespearean, sonnet:

  ABABCDCDEFEFGG

  This scheme can be subdivided into three quatrains (which rhyme on alternating lines) and a final rhymed couplet. The couplet has a punchy, often humorous effect after the shorter quatrains. The rhymes are all exact (none are imperfect), adding to the polished wit of the poem as a whole.

  Notice how well the final rhyme, "gain"/"pain," encapsulates the speaker's situation! He claims that all he's gotten out of this romance is sickness and suffering—but he seems to enjoy these things on some level, so there's a sense in which his "pain" really is his "gain."

“Sonnet 141: In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes” Speaker

• The speaker of "Sonnet 141" is the same as the speaker of all 154 of Shakespeare's Sonnets. These poems tell a coherent but complicated story involving a love triangle. Most of the sonnets are addressed to a character whom critics traditionally call the "Fair Youth": a handsome young man with whom the speaker is passionately in love. However, sonnets 127-152 address a proud, mysterious, and unfaithful woman, whom critics traditionally call the "Dark Lady." The speaker's love for the Lady is more brooding, tormented, and passive-aggressive than his love for the Youth. "Sonnet 141" takes this passive aggression to an extreme, depicting a true love-hate relationship (see lines 1-4 and lines 9-12). In these later poems, the Youth and the Lady also become romantically involved, igniting the speaker's jealousy.

  Is the speaker Shakespeare himself? Readers have argued this question for centuries! Little is known about Shakespeare's personal life, so it's impossible to say how autobiographical the Sonnets are. Regardless, their speaker is as psychologically complicated as any of the famous characters in Shakespeare's plays.

“Sonnet 141: In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes” Setting

• Like most of Shakespeare's sonnets, this one has no clear physical, temporal, or geographical setting. Many readers have assumed the speaker is William Shakespeare himself, and that the time period is therefore Elizabethan England (with all its complex romantic conventions). However, there's some critical disagreement as to whether the speaker is Shakespeare or an invented persona, like one of the characters in his plays. In any case, the sonnets' lack of specifics regarding names, dates, settings, etc. contributes to their timeless quality—they've fascinated readers worldwide for centuries!

Literary and Historical Context of “Sonnet 141: In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes”

• Literary Context

  "Sonnet 141" appears toward the end of William Shakespeare's sequence of 154 sonnets, which was published in 1609 by bookseller and publisher Thomas Thorpe. The first 126 of these sonnets express the speaker's passion for a beautiful young aristocratic gentleman, whom critics have dubbed the Fair Youth. (The first 17 actually urge the Fair Youth to marry and have kids, but they're full of barely restrained passion nonetheless.) Sonnets 127-152 chronicle the speaker's tormented love for a mysterious, unfaithful woman, whom critics call the Dark Lady. (Sonnets 153 and 154 close out the sequence with a pair of poems about Cupid.) This is one of the Dark Lady sonnets.

  In some ways, "Sonnet 141" resembles Shakespeare's now more famous "Sonnet 130" ("My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"), whose speaker also catalogs the Lady's faults and insists he loves her despite them. Both sonnets emerge from a tradition in Renaissance poetry called the blazon.

  • In a blazon, a male poet praises a woman’s beauty by comparing each part of her body to a different beautiful object. For example, Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella #9 compares Stella’s forehead to alabaster, her hair to gold, and her teeth to pearls. The blazon was popular during the 1400s and 1500s in Italian, French, and English poetry, with poets such as Clement Marot, Edmund Spencer, and Thomas Campion participating.
  • But the blazon's popularity soon caught the attention of snarks and smart-alecks, who realized that actually it would be terrifying—not beautiful—to meet a woman who had pearls for teeth and roses growing in her cheek. The blazon thus bred a mocking counter-tradition, called the contreblazon. Shakespeare's "Sonnet 130" belongs to this tradition, and "Sonnet 141," though a less straightforward example, follows suit by denigrating its subject's appearance, voice, and so on.

  "Sonnet 141" was most likely written during the 1590s, during a craze for sonnets that followed the publication of Sidney's Astrophil and Stella (1590). The poem thus emerges at a moment when it would be topical and funny to poke holes in the traditions of the sonnet and its rhetorical excesses.

  Historical Context

  Literary scholars have been unable to agree on a precise date of composition for Shakespeare's Sonnets, but most agree that they were written in the 1590s and circulated to readers in manuscript. (They weren't published until 1609, when bookseller Thomas Thorpe sold a quarto called Shake-speares Sonnets; Shakespeare may or may not have authorized the publication.) This timing would put the poems in the last years of Queen Elizabeth's reign, during the golden age of English literature.

  At this time, English society had recently become Protestant and had survived a series of bloody civil wars in the 14th and 15th centuries. Elizabeth's reign marked a period of internal stability in England (though the isolated island nation faced serious challenges abroad, from, for example, the Catholic Spanish Empire). This internal stability allowed for the flourishing of literature and culture, including the creation of Shakespeare's greatest works. Shakespeare's private, domestic Sonnets indirectly reflect his era's peace and security: they tackle matters of the heart, not matters of state.

More “Sonnet 141: In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes” Resources

• External Resources

  • The Sonnet Aloud — Listen to actor Patrick Stewart recite the poem (with some help from his dog).

  • The Life of William Shakespeare — Watch an A&E documentary about the world's most famous playwright and poet.

  • The Bard's Life and Work — Read a brief biography of Shakespeare at the Poetry Foundation.

  • Introduction to the Sonnets — An introduction to Shakespeare's sequence of 154 sonnets, courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

  • The Sonnets at the British Library — View the British Library's first edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets and read a brief introduction to the volume.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by William Shakespeare

  • Sonnet 104: To me, fair friend, you never can be old

  • Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds

  • Sonnet 129: Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame

  • Sonnet 12: When I do count the clock that tells the time

  • Sonnet 130: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun

  • Sonnet 138: When my love swears that she is made of truth

  • Sonnet 147: My love is as a fever, longing still

  • Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

  • Sonnet 19: Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws

  • Sonnet 20: A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted

  • Sonnet 27: "Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed"

  • Sonnet 29: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

  • Sonnet 30: When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

  • Sonnet 33: Full many a glorious morning have I seen

  • Sonnet 45: The other two, slight air and purging fire

  • Sonnet 55: Not marble nor the gilded monuments

  • Sonnet 60: Like as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore

  • Sonnet 65 ("Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea")

  • Sonnet 71: No longer mourn for me when I am dead

  • Sonnet 73: That time of year thou mayst in me behold

  • Sonnet 94: "They that have power to hurt"