By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took’: in Sonnet 47, Shakespeare concludes his pair of sonnets about the ‘war’ between his eye and his heart, that had been introduced in the previous sonnet. In Sonnet 47, the war has ended in a truce, and Shakespeare’s eye and heart now live in ‘league’ with each other, doing good turns for the other. This turnaround is going to require a little closer analysis: