Sonnet 140
Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press
cruelty
desperation
self-control
love
Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press
My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain;
Lest sorrow lend me words and words express
The manner of my pity-wanting pain.
If I might teach thee wit, better it were,
Though not to love, yet, love, to tell me so;
As testy sick men, when their deaths be near,
No news but health from their physicians know;
For if I should despair, I should grow mad,
And in my madness might speak ill of thee:
Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad,
Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be,
That I may not be so, nor thou belied,
Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.
What It Means
If you must be cruel, at least be clever about it: don't push Shakespeare past the point of being able to speak well of you. He's on the edge. If he loses all hope, he might say what he actually thinks. Right now he still finds ways to praise her. Push him further and those words will go wrong for both of them.
Context
Part of the Dark Lady sequence.
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