SOURCE: "The Action of Lust," in Such Is My Love: A Study of Shakespeare's Sonnets, The University of Chicago Press, 1985, pp. 155-88.

In the following excerpt, Pequigney observes the mechanisms of lust in Shakespeare's Sonnets 127-32 and 144-7.

Possibly no single poem in Shakespeare's sonnet sequence is more imperative for understanding it holistically than Sonnet 129, "The expense of spirit." This key sonnet defines the central theme of Part II as lust, [and] sheds light on its arrangement of sonnets. . . . This sonnet is the third one of Part II, and the first two—127 and 128—prepare the way for it in the course of introducing the secondary subject of the Sonnets, the liaison with the mistress.

The protagonist is already infatuated with her in Sonnet 127. Nothing is said about how or when they met. He does not address her directly here but launches into that stock-in-trade of the amorist, praise...