Sonnet 41
1. Those petty wrongs that liberty commits,
2. When I am sometime absent from thy heart,
3. Thy beauty and thy years full well befits,
4. For still temptation follows where thou art.
5. Gentle thou art and therefore to be won,
6. Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed.
7. And when a woman woes, what woman's son,
8. Will sourly leave her till he have prevailed.
9. Ay me, but yet thou mightest my seat forbear,
10. And chide thy beauty, and thy straying youth,
11. Who lead thee in their riot even there
12. Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth:
13. Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
14. Thine by thy beauty being false to me.
Straying Youth
Dedication: To Henry
Admonishing Henry not to misbehave and show disloyalty to either Elizabeth or Oxford and more importantly beseeching him to be patient where he will yet prevail despite his present condition.
1st Quatrain: (1-4)
Telling Henry that he understand if he commits petty wrongs when Oxford is absent from his heart. Telling him that he still offers temptation to Elizabeth to recognize him.
2nd Quatrain: (5-8)
Telling Elizabeth that Henry in this effort is also acting on her behalf. That his beauty can make him the subject of attacks. And asking him rhetorically what son wouldn’t let their mother attempt forgiveness.
3rd Quatrain: (9-12)
Differing to her supreme authority and probably alluding to his seat as ruler absent telling her to reprimand Henry's poor behavior. Oxford possibly alluding to some kind of scene made by Henry that is likely a precursor to the Essex Rebellion.
couplet (13-14),
Reflecting on Henry's bad behavior causing Elizabeth break the temptation to recognize and that the "beauty" he brings and on his "beauty" contradicted by his behavior and thus a disappointment to Oxford.
Commentary:
The second in the second set of sonnets addressed to Henry. The sonnet contains the rather obvious allusion to a woman’s son which as most of the allusions in these sonnets, so much more accurate and telling then ever realized. The play on truth again should not be lost and reference to Oxford and the relationship of the subject to him as his son and to the woman as his mother and queen alluded to in line 12.
The mention of the hypothetical woman’s son is no accident in line 7 and is a prelude to the actual reference to the subjects son in Sonnet 13.
The mention of thy years in line 3 is a hint of Henry’s coming of age and his being held accountable for himself. Line 7 I believe offers a rather transparent metaphor for the relationship of the “young man” to the other woman.
Line 8 contains the original personal pronoun and an important correct to the usual wording in the substitution of the word “she” for what appears here and in the original “he”.
This sonnet I believe contains the seeds of the behavior which both led to the Essex Rebellion and which display Henry to be much older and autonomous person capable of rebelling against his mother and for whom his father must mildly reprimand. Evidence of the arrow of time alluded to in earlier analysis and even I would offer the paternal nature of this sonnet
Vendler comments that the couplet reveals “that the young man’s beauty here seems a magnetic energy separate from himself’. This almost realized epiphany is a missed opportunity to gain the key to understanding the sonnets. Understanding that beauty represents a metaphor for speaking about Henry and his greater hidden nature and that metaphor in general is a very important element of these sonnets is unfortunately lost on the orthodox.