sensitive of editors asserting that it is hardly worth reprinting" but believes that "this poem is not unimportant, for it enacts a version of the issue we are considering, the way the future can change the past" (224). Michael Shoenfeldt adds that "the poem uses syntactic suspense to depict erotic anxiety" and that the "drama of the attraction and repulsion is made to hinge on our knowledge of the names of the protagonists" (131). Definitely, one can see an "erotic anxiety" in the poem's opening lines as the word 'hate' is spoken: "Those lips that love's own hand did make / Breathed forth the sound that said 'I hate'" (Lines 1-2). Another building of an erotic anxiety is the steady list of body parts routinely named: lips, hand, heart, and tongue. If anything, the erotic anxiety is heightened to an erotic orgy of body language. This sense of giving and taking reminds the reader of theft in the form of love and hate, of stealing one's love through delivering a hateful speech. Or, as Dubrow puts it, "This preoccupation with robbery is...manifest above all in the fact that it appears even in lighthearted compliments and jokes...a playful rendition of a very serious concern with how the future can alter the shape of what has come before" (249). That would make perfect sense with what Dubrow mentioned earlier, how the future can change the past, which is seen in the poem as a playful trick put against the poet in the form of crushing his emotions, which is quickly ascertained at the end of the sonnet. Either as a form of joke telling or sexual suggestion, Sonnet 145 reveals so little that many critics are hard pressed to find revealing details to Shakespeare's early and later life. Interpretations John Hurt, for the 2002 compilation album, When Love Speaks (EMI Classics) Notes References Essays in Criticism, A Quarterly Journal of Literary Criticism: Volume 21, Number 3. Pages 221–226. Shakespeare's First Poem: Sonnet 145, by Andrew Gurr A Companion to Shakespeare's Sonnets (Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture, Pages 33, 127, 132–133, 274–275, and 303, edited by Michael Schoenfeldt A Companion to Shakespeare's Sonnets (Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture, Pages 33, 127, 132–133, 274–275, and 303, edited by Michael Schoenfeldt External links The Original text of Shakespeare's Sonnets Shakespeares-sonnets.com Shakespeare-online.com British poems Sonnets by William Shakespeare