William E. Frost. The Disarming of Cupid, 1850.


Steel engraving, approximately 6.5 x 10 inches, by P. Lightfoot. The engraving is from Charles Knight's two-volume Imperial Edition of The Works of Shakespere(London: Virtue and Company, 1873-76).


This is the only painting we know that illustrates one of Shakespeare's Sonnets, the last one, Number 154.

The little Love-god lying once asleep
Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,
Whilst many nymphs that vow'd chaste life to keep
Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand
The fairest votary took up that fire
Which many legions of true hearts had warm'd;
And so the general of hot desire
Was sleeping by a virgin hand disarm'd.
This brand she quenched in a cool well by,
Which from Love's fire took heat perpetual,
Growing a bath and healthful remedy
For men diseased; but I, my mistress' thrall,
Came there for cure, and this by that I prove,
Love's fire heats water, water cools not love.

Helen Vendler in The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets traces the sonnet to its Anacreontic source and then interprets both Sonnets 153 and 154 (648-9). In her Arden Edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets Katherine Duncan-Jones more vigorously pursues the innuendo and puns on venereal disease and sex. William Frost was probably ignorant of these puns and implications, but he is not without a bit of sexual guile. What he probably saw in the sonnet were possibilities for a study of tasteful and artistic nudes that pandered to the Victorian market for what might be considered genteel and high-minded pornography.