1. But do thy worst to steal thyself away,
2. For term of life thou art assured mine,
3. And life no longer than thy love will stay,
4. For it depends upon that love of thine.
5. Then need I not to fear the worst of wrongs,
6. When in the least of them my life hath end.
7. I see, a better state to me belongs
8. Than that, which on thy humour doth depend.
9. Thou canst not vex me with inconstant mind,
10. Since that my life on thy revolt doth lie,
11. O, what a happy title do I find,
12. Happy to have thy love, happy to die!
13. But what's so blessed-fair that fears no blot,
14. Thou mayst be false, and yet I know it not.
Fear No Blot
Dedication: To Elizabeth
Telling Elizabeth her love is tantamount in his life, because without her love, his life would be pointless. Illustrating his own sense of blessing by her love which enables him to fear nothing, for if he hasn’t her love there is nothing. Then using the point that what is blessed should fear no blot asks her rhetorically what she fears from her secret.
1st Quatrain: (1-4)
Oxford telling Elizabeth that her love is for the complete term of his life, implying that without it his life would end.
2nd Quatrain: (5-8)
Given this he reflects on the irrelevance of fearing the hurt she can impose because without her love he is dead anyway. That his greatest fear of what she could do to him has the benefit of ending his misery. Telling her in line 8 and 9 that he see this "better state" coming.
3rd Quatrain: (9-12)
Effectively he wins either way, either he has her love or is dead which is the better state to his current position.
couplet (13-14),
Finishing with the irony of her own fear of tarnishing her virginity by recognizing and telling her in line 14 that even though she has done this he still loves her by virtue of his "not knowing" what he can't stop demanding.
Commentary:
Oxford expressing his disappointment and melancholy at having waited, while Elizabeth evades her responsibility and also his dependence on her for his this his most basic need. Also in exhibit is Elizabeth's power to end his misery if the transgression he views as his least leads to his death.
This sonnet contains a somewhat new psychological state of mind, hopelessness, and the welcome of death possibly by suicide or possibly imposed. Rhetorically asking the subject about what is so fair that it fears no blot, a perfect question for a Virgin Queen with a secret child and much more Shakespearian than a mere mysterious, unknown, and minor argument surrounding the life of a man from the rural hamlet of Stratford upon Avon.
The message of the couplet should be understood as a rhetorical question put to Elizabeth, of what harm could come to someone so blessed that she can’t undermine her virgin status. Vendler offers that the speaker is somehow “erotically dead”.
The previous sonnet actually appears to follow this sonnet and form one of the pairs discussed earlier.
Probably most important of this sonnet is Oxford's attitude in reveling that his remedy (Henry's recognition) is all that concerns him and without it there is only despair and nothing else to live for. I personally suspect this is not hyperbole or rhetoric as I believe the whole of his Shakespeare endeavors reflected this commitment.
The Cliff Note interpretation of this sonnet suggests that the poet is expressing his acceptance of whatever fate has for him. This is actually not what the poet is saying. As he has said before (this sequencing), his fate is not in the stars. The poet is appealing to his subject, Elizabeth, and it is she whom he knows determines his future and who additionally has the power and capacity to facilitate the poet’s death.
Vendler understands this sonnet as a threat that the young man with withdraw his love. I feel that without the understanding that the subject of this poem is someone who has ultimate power over the subject is a strong impediment to understanding it. Thus she is unaware of the literal truth of life depends upon thy love, and thus not aware of the poet’s expression that his very life is at the mercy of Elizabeth’s humour.
Note:
This sonnet and the beginning sonnets illustrate in my view a Shake-Speare that many scholars are sometime all too unfamiliar with. The not so gentle Shakespeare, the author of Titus Andronicus (not too uncoincidentally a work long questioned on this basis). And a man that no doubt felt very capable of the kind of ruthlessness exhibited in Macbeth and the revenge of Hamlet but for whom it was also always also something for which he never wished to have to pursue. In addition to the seemingly unevenness of works of Shakespeare much more likely produced by a much longer career in writing that that typically attributed to the Stratford man. Further that one can even engage in these type of speculations only attests to the rather absurd documentary evidence surrounding Shakespeare.