1-3. Or whether . . . Or whether . . . ?: i.e., Is it true that, or (on the other hand) is it true that . . . ?

1. being crown'd with you: i.e., made to feel like a king by the idea of being loved by you.

2. Drink up the monarch's plague, this flattery: In Shakespeare's time, all nations were ruled by monarchs, and all monarchs were plagued by flatterers, those who would praise the monarch for anything in order to further their own ends. In addition, a monarch was also threatened by intriguers, supposed friends who would betray the monarch, also to further their own ends. Because of this perilous situation, many monarchs had royal cup-bearers whose responsibility it was to make sure that the king's cup of wine was not poisoned. In this sonnet, Shakespeare creates a metaphor out this circumstance. The metaphor compares the monarch's situation to the feeling of being in love; when we are in love we feel like a monarch of the world, but suspect that the feeling is too good to be true and fear that we are only flattering ourselves.

5. indigest: shapeless.

6. cherubins: lovely angels.

8. objects to his beams assemble: In Shakespeare's time it was thought that the human eye sent out beams of light which reflected off of objects and thus delivered to the sight images of those objects.

11. Mine eye well knows what with his gust is 'greeing: my eye well knows what agrees with my mind's taste.

13-14. 'tis the lesser sin / That: the sin is made less by the fact that.

14. doth first begin: i.e., drinks first.