Love
Probably the most dominant theme in the poem, Love is personified by the speaker in order to make an argument about love's characteristics. At first, we see love as something fragile and holy: when love dies, it is a cause for lamentation. However, very early on, the speaker begins to undermine this portrayal: when he tells us that love lies in a deathbed of "folly," wrapped in a shroud of "shame," with a will that reveals his falsity and blame as his executor, we start to see that love is inherently flawed. The end of love drives people to shame, blame, and other foolishness. As we learn that the speaker is basing his characterization of love mostly on his own experience of rejection by his mistress, we begin to see that love can drive people to pettiness. Finally, when the speaker admits that love is still alive, but has driven him to rage and lies, we begin to see that women are not at fault for killing love; love itself is something fickle that can harm just as much as it leads to joy.
Men vs. Women
The speaker blames women for killing love, stating that they "disdain" the men who love them and ignore their worth. In particular, he blames his mistress' cold "marble heart" for labeling him "Sir Wrong" for no apparent reason. However, it is not just that women kill love; love itself is feminized in the poem. The speaker describes love as "female franzy" or frenzy, suggesting that love stirs up frantic emotions and itself has a fickle, feminine characteristic.
For most of the poem, the speaker contrasts the frenzied, illogical machinations of both women and love with men's steadfastness. He suggests that men are simply the victims of women, and love—hence the need for deliverance from God. However, his own fickleness undermines his point. At the beginning of the poem, he blames his mistress entirely, but by the end, he praises her. Formerly, he has lied about Love's death for most of the poem, noting that "rage hath this error bred": his anger has led him to make a mistake. Here, we can see that men are just as prone to changeable emotions as are women, and perhaps this is just a characteristic that all lovers take on, regardless of gender.
