Sonnet 133 - The Dark Lady and The "Friend"

The Dark Lady and The "Friend"

Because sonnet 133 is the first to directly refer to the “friend”, there is some controversy concerning the subject of that word. Joel Fineman argues that in this sonnet, the poet feels trapped by the Dark Lady, who represents the constraints of a heteronormative society. She has taken the “friend,” or the poet’s homosexual side, from him, preventing the poet from living in his self-created utopia of homosexuality with the Young Man. Unlike the young man sequence, in which the poet “defines his own identity as poet and lover,” in the Dark Lady sequence, particularly sonnet 133, “the poet-lover of the ark ady will discover both himself and his poetry in the loss produced by the fracture of ”. Other critics argue that the Dark Lady has enslaved a literal friend, the Young Man, creating a love triangle between the poet, the Young Man and the Dark Lady. “The suggestion is that the friend had gone to woo the lady for the poet and, according to friendship convention the lady fell in love with the messenger”. Leishman also calls her a “bad angel who has tempted away that good angel his friend”.