Sonnet 144

I love Shakespeare. In fact, while I was in college, I was a Creative Writing minor, and took several classes on Shakespeare. My professor was a soft-spoken woman, but I could tell she had an incredible passion for the Bard.

Some call him a plagarist. I learned from my classes that back in the Elizabethan era, mimicking someone else's work, and tweaking it, improving on it, was actually the highest form of praise. True, Shakespeare did that a lot on his plays, but his poetry...no.

While perusing the Internet, I was trying to remember the title of my favorite sonnet. So I typed in a line, and got back Sonnet 144:

Two loves I have of comfort and despair,

Which like two spirits do suggest me still:*

The better angel is a man right fair,

The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill.

To win me soon to hell*, my female evil

Tempteth my better angel from my side,

And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,

Wooing his purity with her foul pride.

And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend

Suspect I may, but not directly tell;

But being both from me, both to each friend,

I guess one angel in another's hell:

Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt,

Till my bad angel fire my good one out.*