SOURCE: Fineman, Joel. “Shakespeare's ‘Perjur'd Eye.’” Representations, no. 7 (summer 1984): 59-86.

In the following essay, Fineman studies the language, imagery, and rhetorical structure of Shakespeare's sonnets.

In the first portion of his sonnet sequence—in the subsequence of sonnets addressed to a young man—Shakespeare writes a matching pair of sonnets that develop the way in which his eye and heart initially are enemies but then are subsequently friends. The first sonnet of the pair begins: “Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war, / How to divide the conquest of thy sight” (46).¹ In contrast, the second sonnet, relying on a “verdict” that “is determined” at the conclusion of sonnet 46, begins: “Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took, / And each doth good turns now unto the other” (47).

Taken together and in sequence, the two sonnets compose an argument in utramque partem, with their poet placing himself on...