Sonnets 5 & 6: “A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass”

(Sonnets 5 & 6 are a double sonnet meant to be read as one poem.)

Those hours that with gentle work did frame

The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,

Will play the tyrants to the very same,

And that unfair which fairly doth excel.

For never resting time leads Summer on

To hideous winter and confounds him there,

Sap check’d with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,

Beauty o’er-snow’d and bareness everywhere.

Then were not summer’s distillation left,

A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,

Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft,

Nor it nor no remembrance what it was.

   But flowers distill’d though they with winter meet,

   Leese but their show, their substance still lives sweet.

Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface,

In thee thy summer ere thou be distill’d:

Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place,

With beauty’s treasure ere it be self kill’d.

That use is not forbidden usury,

Which happies those that pay the willing loan;

That’s for thy self to breed another thee,

Or ten times happier be it ten for one.

Ten times thy self were happier than thou art,

If ten of thine ten times refigur’d thee,

Then what could death do if thou should’st depart,

Leaving thee living in posterity?

   Be not self-will’d for thou art much too fair,

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

“W. is now trying even harder than he did in Sonnet 4, where his argument lasted 13 lines. Now his argument lasts through two poems to line 12 of Sonnet 6.…

“The language of these sonnets is harder to follow than the earlier ones. Sonnet 5 is easier than Sonnet 6, presenting the metaphor of the distillation of a flower’s essence into perfume as a way of preserving its beauty (the flowers buried under snow by winter). Shakespeare’s image: A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass is a superb example of the power of poetry’s condensed thought... We hardly notice the awkwardness of the next two lines: Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft, / Nor it nor no remembrance what it was…beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft must mean “Beauty’s [lasting] effect [along] with beauty were bereft.” Of course, were bereft must mean “we’re taken away”… We now see that the second line simply explains the first in reverse order: neither beauty nor the lasting effect of beauty, that is, our remembrance of it, would be left to us.

“The metaphor in Sonnet 6 is more difficult….There’s some verbal awkwardness, as there was in Sonnet 5, but here it extends for five lines, all to expound on the willing loan. The loan is for thyself to breed another thee—for having a child—or ten times happier be it ten for one… The tens can get overwhelming, unless you let the meter be your guide and avoid emphasizing them. [see discussion of meter]

“A lot of breath is going into this argument on the same theme as before. Is there anything new here to justify it?... In Sonnets 5 and 6, W. returns to the same argument as Sonnet 2—it’s just laid on thicker…

“In making the argument of Sonnet 2 more leisurely, while using the same kinds of negative images as in Sonnet 4, ending as it does with another image of death, I hear an entirely new tone especially in the couplet of Sonnet 6:

Be not self-will’d for thou art much too fair,

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

“…There’s something plaintive about this. Previous couplets have sounded imperative, or scolding. They recommended, recommended strongly, demanded action. This couplet sounds more like a request. A plea. For the first time, it sounds to me like W. cares about Y.M.”

—Shakespeare’s Sonnets Among His Private Friends, p. 26-29 (publication date 10/1/21)