Sonnet 147

Sonnet 147 is almost bittersweet. For the majority of the sonnet, Shakespeare declares that he is lovesick for a woman. He says “my love is like a fever” (Shakespeare 1) and he yearns for anything that will prolong his “disease”, which would be the fever. He is desperate for the love of this woman and profoundly hurt because he knows that he cannot have it. The last two lines seem to change drastically, from lovesick and hurt to angry. He says that the woman is not as beautiful and charming as he thought she was, and she is indeed “black as hell and dark as night”. Although, it is possible that he is only saying that out of rage, because he still loves her despite how hurt he is. In my research, I found that this sonnet was actually written about Shakespeare’s alleged mistress, who was in fact African American. This could be a reference to sonnet 130, where he says her breasts aren’t snow white but he loves her anyway, because being extremely white was considered most socially acceptable at the time.