Song Meaning
Rufus Wainwright doesn't so much sing Shakespeare's Sonnet 129 as he inhabits it, crawling inside its skin like a particularly stylish parasite. The sonnet, a brutal dissection of lust, finds Wainwright at his most theatrically mournful. He understands the poem's core paradox: desire, that "expense of spirit in a waste of shame," promises a fleeting heaven but delivers a lasting hell. It’s a trap sprung on the self, a "swallowed bait / On purpose laid to make the taker mad." Wainwright's interpretation doesn't soften the blow; instead, it amplifies the sonnet's inherent self-loathing.
The genius of Shakespeare's (and, by extension, Wainwright's) "Sonnet 129" lies in its unflinching honesty. There's no romanticizing, no poetic license taken with the ugliness of base desire. Lust, in this rendering, is "perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame," a force that degrades and consumes. The emotional whiplash – "Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight" – speaks to the cyclical nature of addiction, the endless chase for a pleasure that vanishes upon attainment. The song meaning hinges on this painful recognition: that the object of desire is less important than the desire itself, a hunger that can never be truly satisfied.
Ultimately, "Sonnet 129" is a study in self-deception. The world, Shakespeare writes, "well knows" the destructive power of lust, "yet none knows well / To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell." This isn't ignorance; it's a willful blindness, a deliberate choice to chase the fleeting high despite the inevitable crash. Wainwright’s musical choices underscore this fatalistic acceptance. He doesn't rage against the dying of the light; he simply observes its flickering demise, a detached yet deeply empathetic witness to the human condition. The song, therefore, becomes a kind of cautionary tale, a reminder of our capacity for self-destruction, delivered with Wainwright's signature blend of baroque beauty and bitter irony.
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