Come on, stop worrying about what you’ve done in the past. I’m over it. I understand where you’re coming from; we’ve all made mistakes. You’ve got to see that I’ve forgiven you. Even Tiger Woods has a shitty day; and Kobe Bryant? Well, one day he’s a hero and the next he’s a rapist. All he needs is someone to love him, somebody who can see beyond his one mistake. I’m telling you, nobody’s perfect, not even me. Just look at what I’ve done in my life and it’ll excuse anything you’ve done. When I remember my screw-ups, it makes me see yours in a better light. What you’ve done is nothing, absolutely nothing compared to me. I can see why you slept with that girl. You’re young, you’re figuring out life. I’m still here for you, for real love, for a love that goes beyond that petty physical attraction. I’m not your enemy here, I’m your friend, just listen to me. I can see what you’ve done; I’ve been there myself. And I have a confession to make, really: the problems between us are my fault, too. For everything you’ve done, I’m equally guilty.
The older man as speaker in this sonnet does not really excuse the boy from his transgression. He dismisses the “sensual fault” of the young man with a supposed wisdom that he, the older, brings to the table. The speaker is in fact pissed off, and wounded here, but covering it up with some psychologically deft maneuvering. “All men make faults” – sure, don’t worry, we all make mistakes, is a fairly typical passive-aggressive technique. In fact, the interior anger that we read between the lines simmers: “that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.” This is a man experiencing desperation, a kind of sickness that lasts for over a hundred sonnets. One reads the “loathsome canker” that lives in burgeoning new growth as representative of the old man’s true feelings about his youthful friend. And even the “silver fountain” of the young man bears his share of mud. These are not sentiments that the speaker brushes off with the wave of the hand. Each line suggests negativity and vitriol; where there is the “rose,” we are certain the boy reads “thorns”: similarly we find: “stain” “faults” “trespass” “sins” “hate” and “war.” The poet does not excuse the boy, he blames him. But he twists the words, and so the mental game, into a form of excuse, indicting himself in addition to the boy: “myself corrupting, salving thy amiss.” He hopes that the physical attraction to the (probably) female lover will not obstruct the love between man and boy, a sentiment that has been largely cultivated and misconstrued by the man in his own poetry. The speaker is deluded by his own gift of beautiful language. And he constructs an idealized version of the boy for his own needs. Needs which are suspect, and in fact are selfish, self-motivated, and beyond the scope of actual love.
The sonnets invert the dynamic found in Twelfth Night between Sebastian and Olivia, Viola and Orsino, where the aristocrats themselves choose those from outside the top homosocial two percent. Additionally, much as Troilus did not want to be seen having an affair with Cressida, the boy also turns away from the older poet. He no longer desires any association with the older man, not for any aversion to homosexuality, but for a desire to maintain the proscriptions against cross-class intimacies. Certainly, the young man, as he explores love with other people, as he learns to assert himself in his own social order, has no room in his life for the old, desperate poet, who hounds him for his association, and who needs him for any sense, apparently, of his own self worth. The poet subtly blames the boy, and utilizes this environment to remain connected with him, to cement a bond between the two: “thy adverse party is thy advocate” and “that I an accessory needs must be” attempt to say that “even our deviations are the same; we belong together.” The speaker wants us to believe that the boy loves him; he desires that we ignore his failure to win the boy’s love and remain connected to a social position better than his own. He obsessively gropes for that which he almost had, as noted in “the civil war” between them. He doesn’t want us to witness his aging; doesn’t want us to observe a humiliated, neurotic man past his prime.