Sonnet 137 Themes

The speaker begins Sonnet 137 by talking to "Love" as if it were a living being separate from himself—as if it were a god, in fact. The ancient Romans believed that Cupid (technically the god of...

If love is the center of Sonnet 137’s thematic universe, lies and deceit are pretty much everything orbiting around it. Switching metaphors, you could say that this poem operates like a set of Ru...

Sonnet 137’s speaker is a guy whose lady-friend is massively cheating on him. Massively, folks. So, as you might expect, betrayal is a pretty big theme. The poem doesn’t leave us in any doubt a...

Overall, Shakespeare’s sonnets have a fairly ambiguous view of sex. For example, the famous Sonnet 129 is probably the most anti-sex poem ever written in the English language. What about Sonnet 1...

When it comes to talking about the theme of revenge in Sonnet 137, things get interesting. That’s because, as far as we can see, the speaker never once mentions the word or concept of revenge. So...