Michael Drayton’s speaker, having failed to win his beloved, proposes a strange medicine to cure his love. The recipe is a darkly comic list of impossible ingredients: the dried heart of a woman no gold or honor could sway; tears that never crossed a true-love; sighs boiled from a faithful widow who died of grief for her late husband. Then add the breath of a wife who, when scolded, never answered back, and the prayers of a thrice-married woman who left her money to stale virginity. Each ingredient demands a level of female perfection or contradiction that no real person could supply, poking fun at the impossible ideals of courtly love. The speaker’s tone is both bitter and playfully absurd, as if he knows the cure is as hopeless as the love itself. The final couplet shrugs: if this potion doesn’t work, the devil’s in him—he’s simply doomed. The mood is sardonic, weary, and sharply witty, leaving a taste of cynical resignation.
Sonnet XV: Since to Obtain Thee — Summary
His Remedy for Love
Since to obtain thee nothing will be stead, I have a med'cine that shall cure my love, The powder of her heart dried, when she is dead, That gold nor honor ne'er had power to move, Mixt with her tears, that ne'er her true-love crost Nor at fifteen ne'er long'd to be a bride, Boil'd with her sighs in giving up the ghost, That for her late deceased husband died; Into the same then let a woman breathe, That, being chid, did never word reply, With one thrice-married's prayers, that did bequeath A legacy to stale virginity. If this receipt have not the power to win me, Little I'll say, but think the Devil's in me.