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15/10/2025

https://quaternaryinstitute.com/sonnetcomment118to129.html
'William Shakespeare's Sonnet Philosophy: Volume 2 -
A line-by-line analysis of the 154 individual sonnets using the SONNET Philosophy as the basis for their meaning,' by Roger Peters - paperback - ISBN - 978-0-473-44975-9

Sonnet 129

Th’expense of Spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action, and till action, lust
Is perjured, murd’rous, bloody full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight,
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad.
Made In pursuit and in possession so,
Had, having, and in quest, to have extreme,
A bliss in proof and proud and very woe,
Before a joy proposed behind a dream,
All this the world well knows yet none knows well,
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

Some commentators interpret sonnets 116 and 129 as a pair of Christian sonnets that contrast heavenly love and hellish lust. But, as the commentary on sonnet 116 shows, such a reading is prejudiced against the philosophy of the whole set in which the mind-based excesses of religious love and hate are resolved in natural logic of life and the capacity of the Poet to express the beauty and truth of the mind in mythic verse. When the commentators isolate other sonnets such as 18, 29, 73, and 146 as expression of religious fervour, they prejudicially convert the individual sonnets.
Ironically, the tendency to read Christianity or other beliefs into the mythic logic of individual sonnets is not surprising as Genesis and the Gospels are also founded in the erotic logic of myth. Shakespeare’s Sonnets, though, do not foster the adolescent illusion that the products of the imaginary soul are prior to the dynamic of life. And sonnet 129, of the all sonnets, is furious in its dismissal of such mental fantasies. What some read as a statement of the ‘lust’ between Mistress and Poet, even more keenly expresses the hellish consequences of an imaginary heaven.
Sonnet 129 contrasts the natural ‘lust’ of sexual desire with the excesses of lust perpetrated in the name of the ‘Spirit’. The first line combines both the expenditure of sexual energy in a ‘waste of shame’ (the sinful shame of Genesis), and of the excesses of ‘Spirit’ (129.1) or the overvaluation of the ideal in the mind. Either way, the ‘expense’ is ‘lust in action’ caused by the suppression of sexual desire. When the suppressed desire is ‘acted’ on it becomes ‘perjured’ or untrue to itself, ‘murd'rous’, and ‘bloody full of blame’ (129.3) or responsible for bloodshed in the name of the ideal (in sonnet 9 the idealistic youth ‘commits murd'rous shame upon himself ’).
Such desire is ‘savage’ and untrustworthy as it is contrary to natural logic (129.4). If it is ‘enjoyed’ it is ‘despised straight’ after. It is pursued beyond ‘reason’ and no sooner had than ‘hated’ like a diabolical ‘bait laid on purpose’ to make the ‘taker mad’ (129.8 ). With such ‘expense of Spirit’ lust is made mad in ‘pursuit and in possession’, a ‘bliss’ in being proved wrong, a victim of pride (proud as a sexual pun) and very ‘woeful’ in shame (129.11). If it was once a ‘joy’ (Eden) it has become but a ‘dream’ (heaven).
The couplet considers the inevitable irony when the natural logic of life is ignored. Despite the fact that ‘all this world’ is based on natural logic, no one seems to ‘know well’ enough how to ‘shun’ the illusion of an unworldly ‘heaven’ that ‘leads men’ to act like ‘hell’ on earth. Editors, unable to accept Shakespeare’s profound criticism of the male-based Church, remove the capital S from ‘Spirit’.

12/10/2025

https://quaternaryinstitute.com/sonnetcomment118to129.html
'William Shakespeare's Sonnet Philosophy: Volume 2 -
A line-by-line analysis of the 154 individual sonnets using the SONNET Philosophy as the basis for their meaning,' by Roger Peters - paperback - ISBN - 978-0-473-44975-9

Sonnet 128

How oft when thou my music music playst,
Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers when thou gently swayst,
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
Do I envy those Jacks that nimble leap,
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
Whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap,
At the woods’ boldness by thee blushing stand.
To be so tickled they would change their state,
And situation with those dancing chips,
O’er whom their fingers walk with gentle gait,
Making dead wood more blest than living lips,
Since saucy Jacks so happy are in this,
Give them their fingers, me thy lips to kiss.

The repetition of ‘music music’ in line 1 of sonnet 128 connects it with the ‘music…music’ in the first line of sonnet 8. These two specifically music sonnets are intentionally linked to the pattern of ‘8s’ structured into the whole set. Neither is it accidental that the ‘fingers’ and ‘lips’ in the last line of 128 anticipate the ‘lips’ and ‘hand’ of the first line of sonnet 145. Sonnet 145, uniquely in octosyllables, associates the Mistress with Anne Hathaway (‘hate away’) and hence with the natural interval in music, the octave.
In Volume 1 [William Shakespeare’s Sonnet Philosophy-Vol 1. by Roger Peters; ISBN:978–0–473–46592–6] it was suggested Anne Hathaway was the inspiration behind the Mistress of the Sonnets and the logic of the whole set. Her greater maturity could have bred in Shakespeare the objectivity to represent his youthful idealism in the guise of the Master Mistress.
The Poet uses a stringed instrument in sonnet 8 to illustrate the increase argument, or the need for concord between sire, child and mother. The tone of the sonnet is deliberately literal in keeping with its prosaic purpose. Sonnet 128, by contrast, is full of sexual innuendo and erotic suggestion. It uses a keyed instrument with the relationship between the performer’s fingers and the ‘Jacks’ (keys) evoking an erotic interchange between the Poet and Mistress. Because the Poet and Mistress have no illusions about the natural logic of their relationship, they delight in the musical by-play. Whereas the Master Mistress needs instruction in the logic of increase and the eroticism of mythic poetry, the Poet and the Mistress combine word play and foreplay with consummate ease.
The placement of sonnet 128 immediately after sonnet 127 logically allies ‘music’ with the sensations of ‘black’ and ‘fair’ or the dynamic of ‘beauty’. The Poet listens as the Mistress’ ‘sweet fingers’ (128.3) play the ‘blessed wood’, evoking the ‘wiry concord’ that overwhelms his ‘ear’ (128.4). He asks, ‘do I envy’ the ‘Jacks’ that ‘leap to kiss’ the ‘inward of the Mistress’ hand’ (128.6), and ‘reap a harvest’ as the ‘wood’s boldness stands’ at her ‘blushing’ (128.8 )?
The Poet could exchange his ‘lips’ with the ‘tickled’ wood or ‘dancing chips’, as ‘their’ Mistress’ fingers (the Mistress’ fingers are claimed by the keys or Jacks) make ‘dead wood more blest than living lips’ (128.12). But in the couplet, since the ‘saucy Jacks’ are happy with the Mistress’ fingers (‘their fingers’) the Poet is content, after all, to have her ‘lips to kiss’.
Editors, unwilling to credit Shakespeare with a profound philosophy based in nature, look for evidence of a corrupt text. Against the logic of the sonnet, they change the ‘their’ in lines 11 and 14 to ‘thy’ to conform with their predetermination that the Sonnets were poorly typeset.

09/10/2025

https://quaternaryinstitute.com/sonnetcomment118to129.html
'William Shakespeare's Sonnet Philosophy: Volume 2 -
A line-by-line analysis of the 154 individual sonnets using the SONNET Philosophy as the basis for their meaning,' by Roger Peters - paperback - ISBN - 978-0-473-44975-9

Sonnet 127

In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were it bore not beauty’s name:
But now is black beauty’s successive heir,
And Beauty slandered with a bastard shame,
For since each hand has put on Nature’s power,
Fairing the foul with Art’s false borrowed face,
Sweet beauty hath no name no holy bower,
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore my Mistress’ eyes are Raven black,
Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem,
At such who not born fair no beauty lack,
Slandering Creation with a false esteem,
Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,
That every tongue says beauty should look so.

Sonnet 127 is the first of the 28 Mistress sonnets. It is connected to the Master Mistress sonnets (1 to 126), and particularly to sonnet 126, by the only appearance of the word ‘Nature’ in the 28 sonnets. Because the Mistress is one with nature she is inherently aware of the requirements of natural logic. Whereas the youth sequence began with the increase sonnets (1 to 14), where the idealistic male is encouraged to restore his orientation toward the Mistress and posterity, the Mistress, as the source of the male and of the need to increase, needs no such argument. In the Mistress sequence the Poet launches directly into the beauty and truth dynamic.
In the Mistress sequence, first beauty (127 to 137) and then truth (137 to 152) are defined. Beauty is mentioned 6 times in sonnet 127 with beauty alone mentioned until sonnet 137, in which both beauty and truth occur. From sonnet 138, only truth is mentioned. The Poet defines the concepts of beauty (sensations) and truth (language) according to natural logic. In so doing he critiques their illogical misuse in the traditional beliefs preceding their recovery in the Sonnet logic.
In the ‘old age’ (127.1) what was black (the opposite of conventionalised beauty) was not considered ‘fair’. Or if it was viewed favourably it was not called beauty (127.2). The Poet’s natural logic makes no distinction between ‘black’ beauty and ‘fair’ because they are both forms of sensation. The sensation of black is beauty’s ‘successive heir’ because Shakespeare’s philosophy corrects the ‘old’ understanding in which natural ‘Beauty’ was associated with the ‘shame’ of ‘a bastard’ (127.4).
The ‘old’ distinction between ‘each hand’ (black and fair) ‘puts on’ or falsely assumes ‘Nature’s power’ (127.5). What is naturally foul or black is made fair by ‘false art’ or an illogical about ‘face’ (127.6). Beauty cannot be called beauty when a disparaged form of beauty is ‘profaned’ or lives in ‘disgrace’ (127.8 ). Therefore, not only do the Mistress’ ‘Raven black’ eyes ‘suit’ her, they also ‘seem to mourn’ the attitude that dismisses those who are not ‘born fair’ (127.11). The natural beauty of the Poet’s Mistress, as nature’s representative, effectively ‘slanders Creation’ on which such ‘false esteem’ is based (127.12).
In the couplet, the Mistress’ woeful seeming eyes ‘mourn’ the old beliefs that have trained ‘every tongue’ to say ‘beauty’ only of that which ‘looks’ fair. Shakespeare’s natural logic corrects the error. He begins the Mistress sequence by dismissing the literal belief in biblical ‘Creation’ and the priority it gives to the male God.

06/10/2025

https://quaternaryinstitute.com/sonnetcomment118to129.html
'William Shakespeare's Sonnet Philosophy: Volume 2 -
A line-by-line analysis of the 154 individual sonnets using the SONNET Philosophy as the basis for their meaning,' by Roger Peters - paperback - ISBN - 978-0-473-44975-9

Sonnet 126

O Thou my lovely Boy who in thy power,
Dost hold time’s fickle glass, his sickle, hour:
Who hast by waning grown, and therein show’st,
Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow’st.
If Nature (sovereign mistress over wrack)
As thou goest onwards still will pluck thee back,
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill.
May time disgrace, and wretched minute kill.
Yet fear her O thou minion of her pleasure,
She may detain, but not still keep her treasure.
Her Audit (though delayed) answered must be,
And her Quietus is to render thee.
( )
( )

In the final Master Mistress sonnet the Poet spells out the consequence for the ‘Boy’ (126.1) if he ignores the natural logic of life. ‘Nature’, the ‘sovereign mistress over wrack’ (126.5) will ‘Audit’ the youth’s unrealistic faith in ‘fickle time’ and its symbol, death’s ‘sickle’ (126.2). Nature, the sovereign mistress, as the source of the Mistress or female and hence the Master Mistress or male, has the power to ‘render’ the ‘Boy’ according to natural logic. The title ‘sovereign mistress’ is not a proper name as she is not a ‘goddess’. Rather, the title signifies a logical state of being, out of which the human female and male derive.
The last few sonnets have considered the consequences of organising the natural cycle of time into ‘hours’ and ‘minutes’. In sonnet 126 the Poet addresses the tendency of the ‘Boy’ to be beguiled by the conventions of time, such as the traditional cliché of ‘time’s sickle’, which cuts the day into ‘hours’ (126.2) (with a play on hourglass). The Boy, ironically for him, has ‘grown’ physically mature despite his ‘waning’ regard for life due to his idealistic obsession with death. Although his physical capacity to love has increased, his regard for ‘lovers’ has been ‘withering’ as he grows older (126.4).
Nature threatens to ‘pluck’ him ‘back’ (126.6) from idealistic fantasies of time in memorial and keep him to her natural ‘purpose’. She will ‘disgrace’ time (126.8) for its illusory claims and even ‘kill’ the idea of the ‘minute’ to shatter its illusory power (126.8 ). (Because the traditional reading misunderstands the critique of time in sonnet 126 most modern editions emend the ‘minute’ of line 8 to ‘minutes’.)
The Poet suggests the youth should ‘fear’ Nature because the youth is the ‘minion’ or subject of her ‘pleasure’ or natural values (126.9). She may ‘detain’ him but her ‘Audit’ of his attitude cannot be delayed and must be answered, otherwise her ‘Quietus’ or final reckoning will ‘render’ the youth back into her bosom (126.12). Shakespeare first articulated this idea in Venus and Adonis. When Venus has Adonis killed by a boar she demonstrated the fallacy of Adonis’ idealistic expectations by showing that his blood bred not an immortal replica of himself, but issued instead a flower of nature. The flower, taken off by Venus in her bosom, does not supplant a child born from the interrelation of female and male.
Sonnet 126, with its unique rhyming couplets and 12 lines, was intended by Shakespeare to be a key sonnet in the numerological structure of the set. Its unusual form corresponds to the encryption of the number 126 into the Dedication.

03/10/2025

https://quaternaryinstitute.com/sonnetcomment118to129.html
'William Shakespeare's Sonnet Philosophy: Volume 2 -
A line-by-line analysis of the 154 individual sonnets using the SONNET Philosophy as the basis for their meaning,' by Roger Peters - paperback - ISBN - 978-0-473-44975-9

Sonnet 125

Wer't ought to me I bore the canopy,
With my extern the outward honoring,
Or laid great bases for eternity,
Which proves more short than waste or ruining?
Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour
Lose all, and more by paying too much rent
For compound sweet; Forgoing simple savour,
Pitiful thrivers in their gazing spent.
No, let me be obsequious in thy heart,
And take thou my oblation, poor but free,
Which is not mixed with seconds, knows no art,
But mutual render only me for thee.
Hence, thou suborned Informer, a true soul
When most impeached, stands least in thy control.
In the last few sonnets to the youth the Poet makes it clear his philosophy applies to all ranks of society. As Ulysses explains in Troilus and Cressida, whenever a level of society ignores natural logic the whole society is weakened. Throughout the youth sonnets the Poet has examined the natural logic of truth and beauty in relation to an immature youth who is prey to excessive idealism. By doing so he was also able to reflect on his own development from an idealistic youth to a mature Poet.
The same critique can also be applied to an immature society within which adolescent idealism, or an imbalance in the truth and beauty dynamic, becomes excessive. Sonnet 125 focuses on the higher levels of state where the excessive adherence to the trappings of 'form and favour' (125.5) is most readily seen.
As in sonnet 123, the Poet is unequivocal. If he had to bear the 'canopy' of state to gain 'outward honouring' (125.2), or if he had laid massive foundations for 'pyramids' (123.2) to gain eternal life, then such vanity would be a greater shortcoming than going about intentionally causing 'waste or ruining' (125.4). The Poet has seen such 'dwellers on form and favour' lose everything and 'all' (125.6) when they pay 'too much rent for compounds sweet' (the words used of the immature youth in sonnet 118) or the idealised expectations of an overwrought imagination. They forgo 'simple savour', or the offerings of nature, and are 'pitiful thrivors' because they 'spend' themselves on outward appearance or 'gazing' (125.8 ).
The Poet rejects such 'pitiful' (125.9) spending on appearances. The love he recognises is 'poor but free' (125.10). It is not conditional on the trappings of power such as canopies or pyramids without which kings and clergy would appear as any other person. Because the Poet's natural logic is the logic of humankind regardless of station and faith, he is able to 'render' his relationship to the youth as 'mutual'. Logically there is nothing between the 'me' and the 'thee' (125.12).
In the couplet, the youth's excessive idealism makes him a 'suborned (or paid) Informer' for the state. The natural logic of the 'Heretic' Poet (from sonnet 124) is liable to be 'impeached' by the idealistic youth as 'Informer'. Ironically though, when the Poet's 'true soul' or imaginary mind is most contrary to the dictates of state or faith, it is 'least in thy control'. Shakespeare used his insights to write plays that have refused to conform to any 'suborned' principles of state or faith.

01/10/2025

https://quaternaryinstitute.com/sonnetcomment118to129.html
'William Shakespeare's Sonnet Philosophy: Volume 2 -
A line-by-line analysis of the 154 individual sonnets using the SONNET Philosophy as the basis for their meaning,' by Roger Peters - paperback - ISBN - 978-0-473-44975-9

Sonnet 124

If my dear love were but the child of state,
It might for fortune’s bastard be unfathered,
As subject to time’s love, or to time’s hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered.
No it was builded far from accident,
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
Under the blow of thralled discontent,
Whereto th’inviting time our fashion calls:
It fears not policy that Heretic,
Which works on leases of short numbered hours,
But all alone stands hugely politic,
That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.
To this I witness call the fools of time,
Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.

In sonnet 9 the Poet stated the logical condition for the possibility of ‘love’. All forms of love are dependent on increase because increase ensures human persistence in nature. The last two lines of sonnet 9 state that the youth cannot have love for others in his heart if he commits ‘such murderous shame’ on himself as deny the natural logic of life.
In sonnet 124 the Poet reflects that if his love were considered but a ‘child of state’, whose life was ordained by the divine right of kings and popes, it may as well be the ‘unfathered’ bastard of ‘fortune’ (124.2). Such a bastard love would be unnatural and prey to an understanding of ‘time’ based on death with no logical connection to the natural cycle of life. Disconnected from the life cycle the unfathered love would be ‘subject’ to the prejudice and arbitrary dictates of ‘times love’ or ‘times hate’ (124.3) to be gathered as ‘weeds among weeds’ or ‘flowers among flowers’ according to a whim of ‘state’.
To such prejudice the Poet says ‘no’ (124.5). The love he understands is ‘builded far from accident’. It is not dependent on the ‘smile’ from a king or a pope (124.6). Because it is based in natural logic it does not fall under the ‘blow’ of ‘discontent’ as the inevitable consequence of bo***ge or thraldom (124.7) to the ‘state’. Such an outcome is invited when ‘fashion calls’ time the determinant of love (124.8 ).
The Poet’s appreciation of love, based in nature (and the human dynamic as part of nature) does not fear the ‘policy’ that labels people ‘Heretic’ (124.9) when they refuse to be ‘subject’ to the unnatural expectations of ‘state’. He associates the policy with the convention of reckoning time by the ‘short numbered hours’ (possibly referring to the divisions in the 12 hour day for the Church liturgy). By contrast, his love ‘alone stands hugely politic’ (124.11) as the life force not requiring the heat applied to heretics to make it ‘grow’, nor the opposite of drowning them in showers (echoing ‘times love and hate’).
Shakespeare may have known that Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600. Shakespeare possibly avoided such a fate because his Sonnets mention no specific person or event. His philosophic turn of mind might have saved him from the ‘policies’ of Church and State. In the couplet, as ‘witness’ to the value of his love, the Poet ‘calls’ on those who have been fooled by the policy of time. They think they ‘die’ for the ‘goodness’ of the love of State and Church, but in doing so they have ‘lived for crime’ against the natural logic of life.

27/09/2025

https://quaternaryinstitute.com/sonnetcomment118to129.html
'William Shakespeare's Sonnet Philosophy: Volume 2 -
A line-by-line analysis of the 154 individual sonnets using the SONNET Philosophy as the basis for their meaning,' by Roger Peters - paperback - ISBN - 978-0-473-44975-9

Sonnet 123

No! Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change,
Thy pyramids built up with newer might
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange,
They are but dressings of a former sight:
Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire,
What thou dost foist upon us that is old,
And rather make them born to our desire,
Than think that we before have heard them told:
Thy registers and thee I both defy,
Not wond’ring at the present, nor the past,
For thy records, and what we see doth lie,
Made more or less by thy continual haste:
This I do vow and this shall ever be,
I will be true despite thy scythe and thee.

Shakespeare sets out the natural logic of life in his Sonnets. By accepting Nature as the ‘sovereign mistress’ and the sexual division in nature with its requirement for increase as basic to human nature he arrives at the natural logic of understanding. But before the final statement of the priority of nature over idealistic expectations of time in sonnet 126, the Poet considers the implications for the conventions of time. Death is traditionally associated with time’s scythe or the end of time. But, because life persists regardless of an individual’s death, the idea of the end of time is a convention. Significantly, the word ‘time’ is not mentioned in the 28 Mistress sonnets because she is at one with nature.
In sonnet 123, time is given its correct role in the logic of life. ‘Time boasts’ the Poet will ‘change’ into something new at death (123.1). But, as the Poet points out, the pyramids that were built to forestall time are now ‘nothing novel, nothing strange’ (123.3). They do no more than ‘dress’ up a dead Pharaoh who was once available to ‘sight’. The Poet concedes that the ‘brief ’ length of human life tempts us to ‘admire’ what time has ‘foist upon us that is old’ (123.6). But such things are mere monuments ‘born to our desire’ to outlive nature. They make us forget that we have ‘heard’ such tales ‘before’ (123.8 ).
The Poet ‘defies’ the ‘registers’ or records of time, because ‘wondering at the present’ or ‘the past’ (123.10) does not interest him. The records left by time do ‘lie’ about an end to time when they are used to take advantage of the ‘continual haste’ (123.12) in which lives go by.
In the couplet the Poet makes a solemn ‘vow’ to nature that ‘this’, the continuity of life, will persist (‘shall ever be’) ‘despite’ what time and its ‘scythe’ suggest. The words, the scenes, the acts, the plays and poems of Shakespeare are ‘true’ to life because he refuses to accept the psychology of time that preys on our ‘desire’ (123.7).
Throughout the Sonnets, the Poet has addressed the issue of death, symbolised by time’s scythe. He has demonstrated that the capital made out of time by those who would see death as an escape from the world into another life is based on a particular idea of time with its duration of hours, minutes, weeks, or the span from birth to death. But the end of ‘time’ is a human construct distinct from the continuity of time in the ever-renewing dynamic of life. The Sonnets acknowledge the specific function of time as duration by structuring conventional periods of time into the numerology of the set in a way that corresponds to their approximations.

24/09/2025

Sonnet 122

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
Full charactered with lasting memory,
Which shall above that idle rank remain
Beyond all date even to eternity.
Or at the least, so long as brain and heart
Have faculty by nature to subsist,
Til each to razed oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be missed:
That poor retention could not so much hold,
Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score,
Therefore to give them from me was I bold,
To trust those tables that receive thee more,
To keep an adjunct to remember thee,
Were to import forgetfulness in me.

Sonnet 122 recalls sonnet 18 where the logical unity of the lines of life or increase and the lines of poetry is captured in the line, ‘when in eternal lines to time thou grow’st’. The Poet recognises that the logical condition for lasting poetry is the perpetuation of humans through increase. So in sonnet 122, the ‘gift’ of youth (and this was so for the Poet’s own youth), or the ‘tables’ that ‘record’ his history of increase down the ages, has its logical counterpart in the capacity of the Poet’s ‘brain’ or memory to remember continuity through time.
Only by acknowledging the relationship between increase and the possibility of memories lodged in the brain can the ‘gift’ be ‘full charactered’ (122.2) or be a record of life captured in poetry. Only then can the gift remain ‘above’ the ‘idle rank’, or those who do not appreciate the significance of increase. Only by perpetuating himself in concert with humankind can the youth persist until ‘eternity’ or ‘beyond all date’ (122.4).
The ‘tables’ are the living record or notebook of the youth’s descent from his ancestors. They contain the ‘record’ that ‘tallies’ or ‘scores’ (122.10) the youth’s love. The eternity mentioned is not the eternity of everlasting life. This is made clear in line 5 where the Poet adds the condition he established unequivocally in sonnet 14. ‘Or at least’ he says, till ‘brain and heart’ or mind and body have the capacity to ‘subsist’ in ‘nature’ (122.6). Echoing the couplet of sonnet 14, he says ‘till each (heart and brain) is razed to oblivion’ they will continue to yield the body (increase) and mind (truth and beauty) of the Poet. The ‘record’ (living record from sonnet 55) of the youth will not be ‘missed’ (122.8 ) so long as human life is perpetuated.
The ‘poor retention’ of human life without increase (it ceases to exist) means the brain could not ‘hold’ what it is designed to ‘hold’ (122.9). Furthermore, the apparent problem of the logical relation of brain and heart would not arise. The Poet does not need to tally the youth’s ‘dear love’ if the ‘score’ or activity of love was accepted as already ‘scored’ on his brain. The Poet was ‘bold’ even to ‘give’ the youth his ‘tables’ (122.12) or the living record of his scoring down posterity because it is written by ‘nature’ in his very being. The tables ‘receive thee more’ because they are ingrained in the sexual dynamic of his body.
In the couplet, for the Poet to keep an ‘adjunct’ in his brain or mind, as an aid to memory, would imply or ‘import’ forgetfulness of the youth’s gift. He has no need to ‘remember’ the youth’s gift because the natural logic of life underwrites the philosophy of the Sonnets.

21/09/2025

https://quaternaryinstitute.com/sonnetcomment118to129.html
'William Shakespeare's Sonnet Philosophy: Volume 2 -
A line-by-line analysis of the 154 individual sonnets using the SONNET Philosophy as the basis for their meaning,' by Roger Peters - paperback - ISBN - 978-0-473-44975-9

Sonnet 121

’Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,
When not to be, receives reproach of being,
And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed,
Not by our feeling, but by others’ seeing.
For why should others’ false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies:
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
No, I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses, reckon up their own,
I may be straight though they them-selves be bevel
By their rank thoughts, my deeds must not be shown
Unless this general evil they maintain,
All men are bad and in their badness reign.

Sonnet 121 continues and even intensifies the examination of prejudices generated by the single-mindedness typical of youth divorced from natural logic by the distortions of unrelenting idealism. A belief in absolute goodness leads to the dismissal of humankind as inherently evil. The evilness of such a prejudice against humankind is greater in the Poet’s view that any deed of evil in the ordinary pursuits of life.
The first line is unequivocal. It states categorically ’tis better to be vile than vile esteemed’. The line plays on the word evil as an anagram of vile. The dismissal of humanity as evil (as in Genesis) is so evil that it twists the word evil into something truly vile. It is logically wrong ‘when not to be’ vile at all is still ‘reproached’ (121.2) for being vile. If vileness does not exist in an originating being, then how can an original state of being be vile. The ‘just pleasure’ (121.3) of life, before it was considered vile or lost, was deemed evil not by inner feelings but by the wicked sense of ‘others’ watching (121.4). Basic intuitions are corrupted by the loss of natural logic. Only natural logic provides for a ‘just’ assessment of truth and beauty.
So why should ‘other’s false adulterate eyes’, or a false expectation of sexuality, be able to say anything about the Poet’s ‘sportive blood’ (121.6) or natural sexual enjoyment available since time began. Why should they spy for evil motives in the Poet’s frailties, which in their consciences (wills) or sexual envy (wills) they count as ‘bad’ (121.8 ), when to the Poet such enjoyment is natural.
The Poet stands by his feelings, which are consistent with natural logic. ‘I am that I am’ (121.9) is a rebuff to the biblical ‘I am’. It challenges those who ‘level’ at the Poet’s supposed abuses to ‘reckon up their own’ abuses (another sexual allusion). The Poet is straight or on the level while they are ‘bevel’ (121.11) or at an angle to natural logic. The Poet’s deeds must not be judged ‘by their rank thoughts’ (121.12) because their thoughts offer no more than corrupted words.
If there was any doubt about the Poet or Shakespeare’s point, then the couplet is to the point. Logically, if all men are ‘bad’ and ‘reign’ on earth under the sin of badness then the absolutist state of mind that determines things is itself that state of evil. As a philosopher of the Renaissance, Shakespeare could see a way beyond religious misconceptions. While such attitudes may have found support in pre-Renaissance science, the advances of Copernicus and the recovery of the teachings of Aristotle challenged such beliefs. Shakespeare’s Sonnets provide a systematic formulation of the natural logic required to move beyond adolescent understanding.

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