Th'expense
of spirit

The title of the sonnet consists of
a nominal phrase in which the determinative article the is contracted in order to be linked to the substantive expense, that is, the waste of
something. In particular, spirit is
squandered. This word is really ambiguous: it may refer to someone's mood, soul
or life principle.

The sonnet consists of three
quatrains and a rhyming couplet, that is, its structure is that typical of the
Elizabethan sonnet.

In the first quatrain the poet says
that if you waste spirit, you are pushed towards lust and he provides a
description of it using a lot of adjectives. Lust is something connected to
human instinct, dangerous and indomitable.

In the second and third quatrain the
poet explains the dynamics and of lust: it is enjoyed, then it is disdained, it
is searched and if reached, it is hated, like a bait used to make the prey
crazy.

Lust is crazy before, during and
after that it is reached: you are happy while proving it and painful after you
proved it. It is joy becoming just a dream.

In the couplet, the poet ends his
reflection about lust: it is well known by everybody, but nobody knows how to
avoid that pleasure that becomes a nightmare.

The key word of the sonnet is surely
lust and  its most relevant aspects highlighted by the
speaking voice are: the shame for
wasting life principle just in order to reach pleasure; the sense of action, dynamism and power associated
with lust and its great fame (all this
the world well knows). As a consequence, the idea conveyed by the poet is
that human beings cannot subdue instinct, because passion is such a strong
force that they cannot resist it. Lust is something irrational (extreme, savage) while, on the other
side, men use reason and they know that it is bloody, rude, cruel, not to trust, a woe and a hell. It follows
that there is a very big contraposition between body and mind oft put into
focus in the sonnet. As an example, the parallelism in the second quatrain past reason hunted past reason hated
puts into evidence the verbs to hunt and to hate (phonologically linked also by
the use of alliteration and consonance) : the first one implies the desire and
search of something, using violence too while the second one implies disapprobation,
 dislike of something. What's more, the
rhyming words of the couplet well and
hell appeal to good and evil, even if
the word well has got another meaning: whole.

The reader can note a high density
of sound p s and r (past, reason,
pursuit, purpose, proof, possession, proved) in the whole sonnet: s is an
hissing sound that you can also find in the word lust, while r is a harsh
sound, highlighting the power of passion.

The poet is aware that lust exists
and hits everybody, he just would like to discover how to reach pleasure
without feeling sufferance and pain.