Sonnet 144 (along with Sonnet 138) was published in the Passionate Pilgrim (1599). Shortly before this, Francis Meres referred to Shakespeare's Sonnets in his handbook of Elizabethan poetry, Palladis Tamia, or Wit's Treasurie, published in 1598, which was frequently talked about in the literary centers of London taverns. Shakespeare's sonnets are mostly addressed to a young man, but the chief subject of Sonnet 127 through Sonnet 152 is the "dark lady". Several sonnets portray a conflicted relationship between the speaker, the "dark lady" and the young man. Sonnet 144 is one of the most prominent sonnets to address this conflict.
Structure
Sonnet 144 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form abab cdcd efef gg and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The 4th line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:
× / × / × / × / × /
The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill.
× / × / × / × / × /(×) To win me soon to hell, my female evil (144.4-5) / = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus. (×) = extrametrical syllable.
The 5th line (scanned above) has a final extrametrical syllable or feminine ending, as does the 7th line. The 8th line exhibits a common metrical variation, an initial reversal; it potentially also features a rightward movement of the fourth ictus (resulting in a four-position figure, × × / /, sometimes referred to as a minor ionic):
/ × × / × / × × / /
Wooing his purity with her foul pride. (144.8)
Shakespeare's frequent implied emphasis of pronouns may render the second half of this line regular. Lines 6 and 8 also feature initial reversals, and line 2 potentially does. Line 11 has a potential mid-line reversal, but if a somewhat playful contrastive accent on "to" is inferred, this would render the line regular. Line 9 has a minor ionic. The first ictus of line 14 might fall on any one of the first three syllables, rendering a slightly different shade of meaning with each choice.
The meter demands that line 4's "spirit" function as one syllable, as distinct from its two-syllable appearance in line 2.
Autobiographical interpretations
Michelle Burnham adopts the nineteenth century theories that Shakespeare's sonnets contain autobiographical information about him, in order to explore the novel Ulysses. Through her examination into Joyce's use of the poems, the reader can discover the mindset of the nineteenth century Shakespeare reader. Burnham affirms that critics of the past believed that Shakespeare was caught in a love triangle between a fair boy and dark woman in her article, "'Dark Lady and Fair Man': The Love Triangle in Shakespeare's Sonnet and Ulysses". Stephen Booth reinforces this argument by stating that in line 7 "my saint" "is [written] in the courtly love tradition, in which poets customarily spoke about their beloveds in the manner and language of... worshipers to, or about, saints". Harvey Stanborough claims that Shakespeare's Sonnet 144 discusses not a bisexual relationship between the author and "a man right fair" and "a woman coloured ill", but rather it reveals Shakespeare's internal conflict as an artist. He proposes "that it was actually addressed to a much broader, general audience and is an attempted explanation of his own artistic mind". To him, the two loves in the sonnet embody two passions which pull at Shakespeare's mind in opposing directions: "the speaker is explaining that he has two passions: a passion (desire) for comfort, and a passion (need) for despair". He uses a less edited version of the sonnet to assert that the first line of the poem makes a clear distinction between passions rather than lovers. He uses "Two loves I have, of Comfort and Despaire" to show that the separation of the comma "contend[s] that the two loves he mentions are not people at all, but the two sides--light and dark--of his creative personality".
Stephen Booth argues that the editing of the comma "has no effect on the logic of the line". Stanborough furthers his argument by "argu[ing] that he [Shakespeare] is introducing us to the good side of himself, the side that psychologists call the 'presenting self,'...Being a male, he naturally describes the 'better Angell' as masculine; he also describes it as 'right faire,'... to signify the light of goodness".