Th’expense of the spirit is the sonnet number CXXIX written by Shakespeare; it belongs to a collection of sonnets because the first line correspond to the title. It is composed by 14 lines that are organized into three quatrains and a final rhyming couplet, so it follows the English model. The text presents a rhyme scheme like abab cdcd efef and finally gg.

The sonnet is about lust, the sexual desire of men. The human being is physically attracted by sex, man are made of lust and so they are often unable to control passion.

In the first quatrain the poet gives a judgment of the lust using negative adjectives, there is a negative climax, the atmosphere created by adjectives recalls a Medieval ideas of sex, it does not sound an open minded view of sex. So this is the first aspect of the problem.

In the second quatrain the passion is described as an hunting, people look for lust as an animal looks for its prey. But as soon as the man has enjoyed the passion, he hates it without any reason, as if it were a traps for animals.

In the third quatrain the poet said that the lust is mad both in pursuit and in possession and that while it is experienced it might be a bliss but as soon as it finished it becomes a great sorrow. Before starting it is a joy and after it is only a dream.

The two finals lines says that even if all human being have experienced lust, they never learned; everybody knows well lust but nobody knows how to avoid it.

The poet with this sonnet try to make the reader feel the passion and he wrote about  the power of the passion, that is a Renaissance theme, still keeping the attitude and the ideas of the Medieval thinking.