Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Just as we like to sharpen our appetites by eating pungent combinations of food or make ourselves vomit in order to ward off future illness, so, in the same way, because I was so full of your sweetness (not that it’s ever cloying), I decided to switch from you to a more bitter diet. And because I was tired of being so healthy, I decided it would be good to make myself

sick

This is a reference to the Renaissance practice of “purging,” which was thought to be healthy.

sick , using other people to keep from getting sick of you. With this wise relationship strategy, which I adopted in anticipation of problems that didn’t exist, I actually became used to cheating on you. I applied medicine to a relationship that was healthy to begin with, attempting to cure something totally good by applying evil to it. But I learned from this—and I think what I learned is true—that the drugs I used are poisonous to me, since I’m so lovesick over you.