THE loue which me so cruelly tormenteth,
So pleasing is in my extreamest paine:
that all the more my sorrow is augmenteth,
the more I loue and doe embrace my bane.
Sonnet 42, Edmund Spenser, Lines 1-4
This poem is similar to that of Sidney’s Sonnet 1, where they both are enduring pain for loving a woman. The woman in it poem too seems to realize that he has a hold over Spenser and lets him endure it even though she could probably stop his pain. This makes me wonder if the women both poems gain pleasure from hurting these men that seem to love them so deeply. They obviously know that they have power and use that power to do more harm than good.
