Sonnet 111

Sonnet 111

Sonnet 111 in the 1609 Quarto

Q1 Q2 Q3 C	O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide Than public means which public manners breeds. Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, And almost thence my nature is subdu’d To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand: Pity me then and wish I were renew’d; Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink Potions of eisel ’gainst my strong infection; No bitterness that I will bitter think, Nor double penance, to correct correction. Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye Even that your pity is enough to cure me.	4 8 12 14
	—William Shakespeare^[1]

Sonnet 111 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.

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Transcription

Synopsis

The youth chides the goddess of fortune for providing for the poet nothing better than the public's / common people's applause. For this success the poet has to make his living in the public sphere, what is a shame. In doing so he is degraded, and almost finds himself sullied like a professional dyer stained with his dyes. He asks the youth to hope the poet will be regenerated after taking cleansing medicine against his infection. No medicine will be too bitter, but the youth's pity will be the most effective cure.

Structure

Sonnet 111 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form ABAB CDCD EFEF GG and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The 4th line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:

  ×   /  ×   /      ×    /  ×   /  ×     / 
Than public means which public manners breeds. (111.4)

Line 10 has two common metrical variations, an initial reversal and a final extrametrical syllable or feminine ending:

 /  ×   ×  /  ×     /      ×    /   ×  /  (×) 
Potions of eisell 'gainst my strong infection; (111.10)

/ = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus. (×) = extrametrical syllable.

Lines 12, 13, and 14 also have feminine endings. Lines 8, 13, and 14 also have initial reversals, and they potentially occur in lines 1, 3, and 9.

The meter demands that line 14's "even" function as one syllable.^[2]

Notes

^ Pooler, C[harles] Knox, ed. (1918). The Works of Shakespeare: Sonnets. The Arden Shakespeare [1st series]. London: Methuen & Company. OCLC 4770201.
^ Booth 2000, p. 362.

References

First edition and facsimile

Shakespeare, William (1609). Shake-speares Sonnets: Never Before Imprinted. London: Thomas Thorpe.
Lee, Sidney, ed. (1905). Shakespeares Sonnets: Being a reproduction in facsimile of the first edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. OCLC 458829162.

Variorum editions

Alden, Raymond Macdonald, ed. (1916). The Sonnets of Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. OCLC 234756.
Rollins, Hyder Edward, ed. (1944). A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: The Sonnets [2 Volumes]. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. OCLC 6028485. — Volume I and Volume II at the Internet Archive

Modern critical editions

Atkins, Carl D., ed. (2007). Shakespeare's Sonnets: With Three Hundred Years of Commentary. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN 978-0-8386-4163-7. OCLC 86090499.
Booth, Stephen, ed. (2000) [1st ed. 1977]. Shakespeare's Sonnets (Rev. ed.). New Haven: Yale Nota Bene. ISBN 0-300-01959-9. OCLC 2968040.
Burrow, Colin, ed. (2002). The Complete Sonnets and Poems. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0192819338. OCLC 48532938.
Duncan-Jones, Katherine, ed. (2010) [1st ed. 1997]. Shakespeare's Sonnets. Arden Shakespeare, third series (Rev. ed.). London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-4080-1797-5. OCLC 755065951. — 1st edition at the Internet Archive
Evans, G. Blakemore, ed. (1996). The Sonnets. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521294034. OCLC 32272082.
Kerrigan, John, ed. (1995) [1st ed. 1986]. The Sonnets ; and, A Lover's Complaint. New Penguin Shakespeare (Rev. ed.). Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-070732-8. OCLC 15018446.
Mowat, Barbara A.; Werstine, Paul, eds. (2006). Shakespeare's Sonnets & Poems. Folger Shakespeare Library. New York: Washington Square Press. ISBN 978-0743273282. OCLC 64594469.
Orgel, Stephen, ed. (2001). The Sonnets. The Pelican Shakespeare (Rev. ed.). New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0140714531. OCLC 46683809.
Vendler, Helen, ed. (1997). The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-63712-7. OCLC 36806589.

William Shakespeare

Plays

Comedies	All's Well That Ends Well As You Like It The Comedy of Errors Cymbeline Love's Labour's Lost Measure for Measure The Merchant of Venice The Merry Wives of Windsor A Midsummer Night's Dream Much Ado About Nothing Pericles, Prince of Tyre ✻ The Taming of the Shrew The Tempest Twelfth Night The Two Gentlemen of Verona The Two Noble Kinsmen ✻ The Winter's Tale
Tragedies	Antony and Cleopatra Coriolanus Hamlet Julius Caesar King Lear Macbeth Othello Romeo and Juliet Timon of Athens Titus Andronicus Troilus and Cressida
Histories	King John Edward III ✻ Richard II Henry IV 1 2 Henry V Henry VI 1 ✻ 2 3 Richard III Henry VIII ✻
Early editions	Quarto publications First Folio Second Folio
See also	Problem plays Late romances Henriad Characters A–K L–Z Ghost character Chronology Performances Settings Scenes

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Plays

Poems

The Passionate Pilgrim
To the Queen

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Anne Hathaway (wife)
Susanna Hall (daughter)
Hamnet Shakespeare (son)
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Elizabeth Barnard (granddaughter)
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Edmund Shakespeare (brother)
Richard Shakespeare (grandfather)
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✻ Shakespeare and other authors
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This page was last edited on 15 April 2022, at 16:26

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