Sonnet 6

6

Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface

In thee thy summer, ere thou be distilled:

Make sweet some vial, treasure thou some place

With beauty’s treasure, ere it be self-killed.

That use is not forbidden usury

Which happies those that pay the willing loan;

That’s for thyself to breed another thee,

Or ten times happier, be it ten for one:

Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,

If ten of thine ten times refigured thee;

Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,

Leaving thee living in posterity?

Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fair

To be death’s conquest and make worms thine heir.

General
Sonnet 6 should not be read in isolation, but as following on from Sonnet 5 with which it forms a pair. Without this context, the first quatrain loses some of its impact. As well as the ‘Then’ which starts the sonnet, indicating that the speaker is continuing his argument, there are important link words that bind the two, moving from the general tone of Sonnet 5 to the more personal here:

1. winter: 5.6; 5.13
2. summer: 5.5; 5.9
    distilled: 5.9; 5.13
3. sweet: 5.14
4. beauty: 5.8; 5.11
13. fair: 5.4

HV seems unimpressed by this sonnet with what she sees as ‘this rather labored conceit of interest-bearing funds’, but for me it is so typical of WS to get caught up in such a financial/legal metaphor that jars with the organic imagery of Sonnet 5 as well as this sonnet’s first part.

Sense
First quatrain
The speaker now talks directly to the young man to say that in the same way (as the flowers in Sonnet 5), he should not let old age’s rough hand mar/ravage his face, before his ‘essence’ is captured – i.e. he procreates. He should render some womb precious (GBE), cherish/fill it with beauty’s treasure (i.e. his offspring) before that beauty is ‘self-killed’ – destroys itself.

1. ragged: rough (cf tatter’d weed in Sonnet 2) In Q spelling wragged and winter alliterate (HV).
deface: JK suggests that this verb is given an ‘aggressive physicality’ by the attention paid to the young man’s face in Sonnets 1, 2, 3 and 5 – so it is most likely in the sense of ‘unface, ravage the features’. It is, considered in this context, a violent word that sits well with ‘self-killed’ in line 4.
3. Make sweet some vial: SB: ‘the specific meaning ‘impregnate the womb of some woman’ is suggested by the metaphor and the context of the preceding sonnets and is confirmed by line 7.’ This view is supported by GBE with the additional comment making the link to ‘obvious play on the bottle (‘vial’) of ‘sweet’ perfume as an image of marriage in 5.9-10.’
treasure: endow with treasure, enrich (GBE). Treasure is a loaded word in The Sonnets, implying seed/semen as in Sonnet 20.14: ‘Mine be thy love, and thy love’s use their treasure.’ Elsewhere, in Othello: ‘Say that they slack in their duties / And pour our treasures into foreign laps.’ (4.3.86); and in 1H4 where Lady Hotspur says to her husband ‘my treasures and my rights of thee’ (2.3.4)
4. self-killed: this refers to the idea of the little death that is the result of self-pleasuring (as in 4.7-8 and elsewhere in this first group)

Second quatrain
The mercantile metaphor is picked up, with the speaker saying that it would not be illegal usury to get that sort of return ie children, if it makes the debtor happy – ie the mother who returns the loan (semen) happily with interest (children). That sort of usury is an opportunity for him to produce another self, the mother being 10 times happier if 10 children were to be produced from the one man.

5-6: JK: ‘…usurers are not forbidden to lend money for interest when their debtors are willing to be in debt on usurious terms and pleased to repay what they owe.’ So – the woman will return the loan of his seed with interest ie his progeny.
5. use: (a) kind of use (b) interest, return (GBE) (c) practice of lending money out for interest (usury)(KDJ) (d) sexual intercourse
usury: JK – Elizabeth legalized usury in 1571, but it was frowned on for a long time afterwards. That same statute declared that ‘all usury, being forbidden by the law of God, is sin and detestable’ – it legalized an interest rate of ten in the hundred (cf emphasis on ‘ten’ in lines 8-10). WS is therefore playing with old Aristotlean idea that usury was considered ‘unnatural’, the kind of incest (metal breeding from metal) and at the same time glancing at the legal ten percent return on an investment (GBE). In his Discourse upon Usury (1572), Thomas Wilson comments: ‘God ordeyned for maintenaunce of amitye, and declaration of love, between man and man: whereas now lending is vused for pryate benfit and oppression, & so no charitie is vsed at all…’ Also cf. Sonnet 4.7-8: ‘Profitless usurer’ etc
6. happies: makes happy/fortunate
willing: voluntary, with sexual overtones
7. That’s: which is
breed: usurers were similarly thought of as making their ‘treasure’ (4) breed and multiply (GBE). It reminds me of Shylock’s comment in MV 1.3.128: ‘for when did friendship take / A breed for barren metal of his friend?’
8. ten for one: ie if he had 10 children the happy mother would be ten times happier if it were to produce ten of him. Relates to the legal interest rate – childbirth is talked about in terms of a good investment.

Third quatrain
It would be more fortunate if there were ten replicas of you, and if ten of your offspring replicated you again. Then what would death do if you should die and yet leave you living in perpetuity?
9. than: changed by all editors from 'then' in Q to make sense.
Ten times…art: (a) you would be happier if you lived in 10 likenesses rather than just as you do (b) it would indeed be a fortunate state of affairs if you lived in 10 likenesses of yourself. (JK) Or: 10 of your offspring would offer posterity a much more promising future than you do now in your state of oneness (GBE).
10. If ten…refigured thee: if you had ten children all duplicating you. On a secondary level, the line runs away with itself, suggesting 100 grandchildren (JK).
refigured: re-embodied; perhaps ‘remultiplied’. Note: ‘the multiplication of ten by ten occurs, inevitably, in the tenth line’ (CB); duplicated (SB)
11. depart: die, echoing Elizabethan marriage service
12. Leaving thee living: Booth makes much of the phonetic play between these words, and the link between leaving and depart, and the link between leaving and the botanical metaphor of Sonnet 5. He also notes that leaving modifies both death and depart: ‘what could death do if he had to leave you behind, if he could not take you’. JK also picks up on sense of ‘bequeathing yourself.’
posterity: (a) offspring and offspring of your offspring (b) perpetuity

Couplet
The speaker implores the young man not to be licentiously self-destructive or obstinate, since he is too beautiful to be defeated by death and to make only worms his heirs.
13. self-willed: note link to self-killed in line 4. Sexual innuendo; ‘licentiously self-destructive’ (GBE); obstinate
fair: (a) unblemished (b) beautiful (c) of good judgement.
14. conquest: (a) something overcome by death (b) property acquired other than by inheritance (e.g force)

Links with other sonnets
4. treasure: 20.14
5. usury: 4.7-8

Links with other works by WS
4. treasure: Othello, 4.3.86; 1H4, 2.3.4
7. breed: MV, 1.3.128

Links with works by other authors
5-14: Genesis 1.22: ‘go forth and multiply’
5. usury: cf. Aristotle Politics, 1.3.23 ; Thomas Wilson, Discourse upon Usury (1572)