Sonnet 147 Summary & Analysis
by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 147 Summary & Analysis
by William Shakespeare

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"Sonnet 147" is part of a series of Shakespeare's sonnets addressed to a figure known as the "Dark Lady." In the poem, the speaker compares his love and desire for this person to an illness, one that's robbed him of the ability to act or think rationally. The speaker doesn't even really want help—he just wants more of the same love that's making him so sick! The poem, then, presents obsessive love (and lust) as a painful, irrational, and decidedly unhealthy experience. And while many of Shakespeare's earlier sonnets are filled with adoring praise for a figure known as the "Fair Youth," this poem is far less kind to its subject. In the closing couplet, he turns on the "Dark Lady" and bitterly accuses her of being "black as hell" and "dark as night."

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