The Passionate Pilgrim – “Two loves I have of comfort and despair…” (Sonnet 144)

The Passionate Pilgrim – “Two loves I have of comfort and despair…” (Sonnet 144)

This sonnet is normally paired in a reading with the lighter more playful Sonnet 143 so it is bizarre that it appears in this anthology on its own unless Jaggard was drawn to its dark tone (or perhaps that is all his poetry thief could steal on a cold day in 1599). Sonnet 144 has the atmosphere of a Morality drama where the poet is companioned by the personifications of Vice and Virtue and rather than choosing between the two, sees Vice and Virtue couple off and exit his room with lustful intentions. Perhaps Shakespeare was thinking of Marlowe's 1592 play ‘Dr. Faustus’ when he wrote this. It could even be the beginnings of a longer poem or an attempt at a play on the same ponderings. Either way, this poem which may seems whimsical when referred to, is darker and more somber in its tone when read.

The poet starts with contemplation on his state of mental anguish where the personified Virtue and Vice (“a man right fair” and the worser spirit “a woman colour’d ill”) seem both like muses but also players in a love triangle at whose apex is the poet. It seems that the poet suspects that his “worser spirit” is tempting his “better angel” away from him and that his “better angel” is being corrupted or “turn’d fiend”. The poet does not know for sure that this is what is happening:

“Suspect I may, but not directly tell…”

It is interesting that the poet refers to both as angels. The male companion, perhaps the Earl of Southhampton, provides camaraderie, love and a muse for his soul and his writings, while even in this short sonnet we get the sense that the ‘dark lady’ provides physical, sexual and lustful fulfillment and nourishment for the poet.

The sonnet ends with the poet reinforcing his despair because he lives with suspicion of the affair. The final mention of “fire” in the last line is interesting and suitably allusive in its meaning. Perhaps the poet means that his mistress will bring damnation to his male lover or maybe he believes that she will inflame love in his male lover such that he will cease to love the poet or perchance this is a simple reference to venereal disease (which was quite prevalent in Elizabethan times in London) and the fact that the poet thinks that his female lover will eventually give his male “better angel” this disease whose major symptom is a burning sensation or “fire”:

“Yet this I ne’er know, but live in doubt,

Till my bad angel fire my good one out.”