Sonnet 146: Poor Soul, the Centre of My Sinful Earth
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Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
[Paying] these rebel powers that thee array, Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? Why, so large cost having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end? Then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss And let that pine to aggravate thy store, Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross: Within be fed, without be rich no more. So shalt thou feed on death that feeds on men, And death once dead, there's no more dying then. |
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Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
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Poor soul of mine, which you are situated at, and form, the centre of my sinful body.
'Earth' here stands for my physical body, which, as Sonnet 44 for example made clear, is "so much of earth and water wrought" that it cannot overcome the constraints of space and time, unlike the other two classical elements with which Sonnet 45 then continues, "slight air and purging fire," which respectively stand for "the first, my thought, the other, my desire." The idea that the soul is housed – or, depending on the poet's take on the matter, imprisoned – in the body was commonplace then and still is now, as is the idea that the soul can and should be cleansed of the stains incurred by the sins of the body through spiritual endeavour, such as prayer or supplication to God. The body, meanwhile, is sinful because it indulges in 'sins of the flesh' – by implication sex outside marriage first and foremost – though other biblically or in more general terms morally sinful behaviours, such as gluttony, may be alluded to, as indeed also ostentation and the satisfaction of material desires, which are about to be outlined in what follows. |
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[Paying] these rebel powers that thee array,
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We here encounter the most significant and problematic textual difficulty or crux in the entire collection.
The Quarto Edition reads: My sinful earth these rebel powers that thee array. This, almost everybody agrees, cannot be right. Firstly, because it doesn't make sense; secondly, because it gives the line 12 syllables, which is at least certainly one, in this case in fact two, too many for it to scan; thirdly, because nowhere else in the sonnets does Shakespeare employ a comparable construction of repeating the last three words of a line to open the next line, and while this in itself is no valid reason for him not doing so now, it means we have no example to refer to to explain or justify an obvious oddity such as this. The simple and extremely likely explanation for the line having been printed as it stands is a transcription or typesetting error, and that means we are somewhat left in an awkward dilemma. Some editors elect to replace the words 'My sinful earth' in this second line with square brackets and dashes or a blank space, on solid grounds that we don't know what Shakespeare here meant to write, and we most likely never will, so we leave it open. This works well as long as you just read the sonnet quietly to yourself for study. As soon as you want to read it out loud or memorise and recite it, you come up against the problem that you can't properly voice blank space or dashes. For this, as well of course as many other reasons, editors by contrast often also choose to pad out the line with suggestions of their own. This is inherently problematic because it presumes an ability or competency on the part of the editor to think and compose on behalf of the poet, which with any author would be risky; with Shakespeare it is likely to prove a veritable pitfall. Many emendations have thus been put forward by editors, starting with Edmond Malone who rescued the Sonnets from John Benson's bowdlerised-before-Bowdler-even-had-lived edition of 1640 and restored them to the integrity of the 1609 Quarto. Benson, incidentally, while liberally messing with Shakespeare's poetry throughout by changing the order, stringing sonnets together, turning male references into female or generic ones, and leaving out sonnets he didn't like, did not alter this obviously faulty rendering and in this of all cases, perhaps tellingly, left the Quarto intact. 150 years later, in 1790, Malone, the first editor to demonstrate real understanding of and respect for the Sonnets, proposed 'Fooled by' to fill in the blanks, thus yielding: Fooled by these rebel powers that thee array. Others have since also suggested 'Foiled by', 'Spoiled by', or even, drawing on the term's threefold occurrence later 'Feeding'. None of these is truly satisfactory. Nor, in all seriousness, is the emendation proposed here to 'Paying'. I arrive at it by the simple reasoning that in a moment the sonnet calls the 'outward walls', for which read the body's exterior that is here 'arrayed' by these 'rebel powers', 'costly' and immediately afterwards wonders: Why, so large cost having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? Fighting forces, such as rebel powers, would have to be paid and so this offers itself as a possible solution that plays both on the metaphor of a rebel army and on the excessive expenditure that the soul has permitted on fading, short-lived externalities, preparing the ground furthermore for the 'buying' and 'selling' of Line 11 and offering a satisfying-enough mirror pattern to Line 4 which starts with the word 'Painting'. None of which, I must stress, is to claim that this is what Shakespeare wrote. He may have had 'Thrall to', for example, or any of many other possible phrasings. We don't know what Shakespeare wrote: this, as any other variant, can only ever give us something to say where otherwise we would have a silent gap. The line then means: You, my soul, which you are paying and thus rewarding and expending on these rebel powers that deck you out or equip you... To 'array' means 'to dress someone', whereas an 'array' is also 'elaborate or beautiful clothing' (Oxford Languages). Who or what exactly the 'rebel powers' are, though, is largely left to our imagination. It suggests a force or a power that acts contrary to the soul's true interest and seeks to overthrow it as the rightful ruler of the human being who consists of the three entities mind, body, and soul. And by 'arraying' the soul splendidly in a beautifully clothed body, this force or power also appears to flatter the soul and thus perhaps entice it to 'be fooled', 'foiled', or 'spoiled' by, or to be 'feeding' or indeed 'paying' it. Katherine Duncan-Jones in the Arden Edition of the Sonnets points out that J. C. Maxwell, a 20th century scholar and editor of Shakespeare's works, points out in turn that Samuel Daniel uses the phrase 'rebel powers' in The Tragedy of Cleopatra, which was published in 1594 and so may well have served as an inspiration for Shakespeare of whom we know that he was attuned to Daniel's poetry. The relevant passage reads: Fain would she entertain the time as now. And now would fain that Death should seize upon her Whilst I might see presented in her brow The doubtful combat tried 'twixt Life and Honour. [Till] sharply blaming of her rebel powers, "False Flesh," saith she, "and what! dost thou conspire With Caesar too, as thou wert none of ours, To work my shame, and hinder my desire? Here, the 'rebel powers' are 'false flesh', and therefore also refer to the body as the usurper of the soul's preeminence in the human being's trifold constellation, supporting somewhat our reading of the line in this vein. |
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Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? |
Why do you, my poor soul, languish and starve within your enclosure – my body – and suffer this deprivation while at the same time you are painting the walls of this metaphorical prison in such expensive, colourful splendour?
'Gay' here as elsewhere in Shakespeare when applied to clothing or vestments suggests 'garish': there is a subtle but distinct note of disapproval in the word in this context. And just in case you wonder or don't know: 'gay' of course at the time has absolutely nothing to do with sexuality. It is not until well into the 20th century that the word 'gay' comes to mean someone who is physically attracted to someone of their own gender. And nor does the 21st century derogatory derivation of 'gay' as something that is supposed to be generally 'lame' come into play: when Shakespeare disapproves of something because of being 'gay', it is because it is visually loud and tasteless and immodest. We have come across it in Sonnet 69, where Shakespeare actively disparages the relatively new fashion of the time for big wigs; and on several occasions in the plays is 'gay apparel' treated with disdain: it smacks of superficiality and ostentation, and it comes, of course, at a price. Not only the material, monetary cost of buying expensive clothes, but also the cost to the soul of expending energy and the 'spirit vital' on matters that last only a short while and impress nobody but the most superficial: |
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Why, so large cost having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? |
Why, when such a large expense actually results in something that has such short a lifespan and period of value, do you waste it all on your gradually and forever fading, as in disintegrating, body?
'Mansion' as a term and metaphor for the human body also is not new to us: O what a mansion have those vices got Which for their habitation chose out thee, Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot And all things turns to fair that eyes can see! Asks and exclaims Sonnet 95, Shakespeare's fiercest admonishment of his young lover in the Fair Youth section of the Sonnets; and here as there, 'mansion' carries a note of sarcasm: these edifices, our bodies, no matter how gorgeous or magnificent, will all and invariably turn out to be crumbling palaces indeed... |
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Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? |
Shall it be the case that worms, who are after all the sole heirs of all this material excess, eat up that which you have spent or expended or paid out?
The question is, of course, rhetorical, while the image of worms as the ultimate beneficiaries of our physical decay is not only commonplace but also something we have encountered in these sonnets before: As early as Sonnet 6, Shakespeare implores his young man: Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fair To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir. And Sonnets 71 and 74 both conjure up the same picture with: No longer mourn for me when I am dead Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world that I am fled From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell. And: So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life, The prey of worms, my body being dead; respectively. |
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Is this thy body's end?
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This question is even more obviously rhetorical than the previous one, since everyone's material remains and goods will ultimately go to worms, either literally, when they eat through your coffin and your buried body in the ground, or metaphorically when the ashes after your cremation go to ashes and the dust that remains of you goes to dust: this end to the body is a given, as is the end to all material goods ever made in the world, given time.
But there is a secondary meaning to the question, which is: Is this thy body's end, as in thy body's purpose? And what purpose the body may have in the meantime, while it is still alive, can still be changed: |
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Then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss
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Then, that being the case, you, my soul, do this: live on or from the inevitable loss of your body which is and should always only be your servant, and not the other way round.
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And let that pine to aggravate thy store,
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And let it, your body, pine or languish or go without, so that you can instead increase your own spiritual wealth...
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Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross:
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...and do it thus: buy or acquire divine terms, meaning on the one hand terms, as in conditions, ordained by God, and on the other, terms, as in a 'lease' or duration that is divine and therefore eternal.
Do so by 'selling' – for which read properly and profitably exchanging – the hours and hours of meaningless pursuit of material wealth and external appearances you have indulged in for spiritual growth, and thus getting rid of the ultimately trashy stuff you have accumulated, and allowing the garish, ostentatious display of it to dissipate and vanish. |
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Within be fed, without be rich no more.
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Be you, my soul, fed within, meaning on the inside of my being or within the housing that is provided by my body, but no longer be or seem 'rich' on the outside; in other words, no longer aim to deck yourself out in fine clothing and to adorn yourself with jewellery or other such accoutrements as a rich person is usually seen with.
Bearing in mind, always, of course, that in Shakespeare's day, a person's standing and status in society was inextricably linked to how they appeared in public and very specifically how they dressed; there were, as we briefly touched on when discussing Sonnet 99, even the sumptuary laws in England that stipulated quite precisely who could wear what, depending on their state, as in their position in society. |
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So shalt thou feed on death that feeds on men,
And death once dead, there's no more dying then. |
And in doing so you, my soul, will 'feed on', for which read be nourished by and thus overcome, death, which in turn feeds on us human beings perennially; and once death is dead, because it has thus been conquered, there is no more dying, only the eternal life in the bosom of God, so to speak.
The language, while not quoting any particular passages from the Bible, is clearly and deeply biblical, embracing the notion that those souls that commit themselves to God – in the Christian tradition through Jesus Christ – will find everlasting life. |
With his solemn, near pious, Sonnet 146, William Shakespeare for the first and only time speaks directly to his soul and entreats it to look after itself; to stop expending its energy on the pursuit of outward, physical adornments which are all doomed to swift decay – effectively starving and weakening itself whilst feeding and strengthening the gluttonous body that is only meant to house it and that will soon succumb to death – and instead to let go of material riches and with the 'return' from 'selling' them, 'purchase' something infinitely more valuable: eternal life in concord with, and on the terms ordained by, God.
The poem makes no mention, nor does it allude to or reference indirectly, any lover, mistress, or wife, nor love itself, or sex. This, too, makes it unique in the collection. As does its close alignment with a Christian notion of redemption through spiritual nurture at the expense of, and in preference to, physical or material gratification.
This poem's sincere spirituality and apparently authentic – albeit merely implicit – religious note stands in extreme contrast to Sonnet 144 with its explicit sexual triangle, with its "man right fair" whom Shakespeare supposes to be in his mistress's 'hell'. Sonnet 146 sounds to all intents and purposes as if our Will was now, having clearly received and in Sonnet 145 acknowledged forgiveness from his wife Anne, seeking also reconciliation with God by mending his ways and abandoning his hedonistic lifestyle.
This is and has to be pure supposition, of course. But it rather anchors the previous Sonnet 145 where we ventured it belong: as the linchpin between the excesses of 144 with everything that goes before and the self-chastisement that is yet to come. It further supports our contention, explicated in our last episode, that Sonnet 145 is neither an accident, nor a randomly reallocated piece of juvenile trivia, nor an embarrassing lapse of Shakespeare's poetic powers, but a deliberate, conscious, and in fact highly effective caesura that fulfils the specific function of bringing things home now: both quite literally, preparing the ground for the poet to return to Stratford-upon-Avon and leave behind his mistress and his young man, and to metaphorically home in on the concluding thoughts of the collection, starting with this, Sonnet 146.
Editors rightly tend to point out that poems which deal with the juxtaposition of soul and body appear often at the time, citing once more Sir Philip Sidney, specifically his devotional poem that starts with the lines
Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust;
And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things;
and similarly extols a spiritual, divine, and therefore exalted and eternal love over any mortal, physical love.
The other poem you will frequently see quoted in relation to this one is Sonnet 28 in Bartholomew Griffin's 1596 sequence Fidessa, which Shakespeare may easily have been familiar with:
Well may my soul, immortal and divine,
That is imprisoned in a lump of clay,
Breathe out laments until this body pine,
That from her takes her pleasures all away...
And so we certainly cannot claim that Shakespeare's use of metaphor or symbolism here be original.
What is fascinating though, even startling, is its deployment here in the collection, and the zooming in on death as something that 'feeds on men' but that the soul can in turn 'feed' on and in doing so become immortal. It is a sombre, even disturbing, image that resolves itself poetically not in an expression of light and the promised eternal life, but in a subdued mere absence of death. It is as if Shakespeare here anticipates by three hundred years the tenor of nihilism, without expressly subscribing to it. And so arresting, compelling, is the conclusion "And death once dead, there's no more dying then" that it fed a 20th century writer her title for a crime novel...
Every so often when discussing these sonnets we take a step back and wonder: what brings this on? Why is William Shakespeare writing these words now? Mostly we can at best hazard a guess – sometimes more plausible, sometimes more speculative – though in this particular case even asking the question seems well nigh futile.
Except, the sonnet fits. The wave form charted by the 'Dark Lady Sonnets' brought us to what in our last episode we called a climax in Sonnet 144, which is the last poem to make direct reference to both the mistress and the male lover, followed by Sonnet 145 which in form and tone stops everything that's gone before dead and seems to prepare the ground for an end to all these affairs, acknowledging Anne, Shakespeare's wife of, at the time of publication, 24 years, as hating 'not me'.
Of course, we don't know when Shakespeare wrote this sonnet any more than we actually know when he wrote Sonnet 145 or any of the other sonnets, but the way these poems are arranged in the collection suggests – as we posited in our last episode – intent and purpose, and in this intent and purpose Sonnet 146 finds its place, seeking to do the 'good', the 'moral' thing of guiding the soul towards victory over the vices of the body.
This, though, is Shakespeare, and such simplicity as we might hope for or fear would tie everything together now and tidy things up with good triumphing over evil, God over the devil, pure love over sex, is not, of course, forthcoming.
The next poem, Sonnet 147, likens the poet's desire for his mistress to a disease, Sonnet 148 develops that theme into one of deception through impaired judgment, Sonnets 149 and 150 – implicitly perhaps illustrating such impairment – subject our poet to the mistress's whim and power, and Sonnet 151 once more then, like a beast that cannot be put down, gives rise to the thing that stands and falls in men depending on how sexually excited they are, thus blatantly and mischievously undermining any presumed 'purity' of the poet's person resulting from his reflections in this sonnet here.
That then leaves Sonnet 152, which, maybe appropriately, plays on people swearing false and true, and therefore on our poet by necessity dealing in both truth and lies in his poetry. And then two versions of the same classical allegory with some playfulness on Cupid and his 'torch' and the 'fire' of 'love' it can and, so our Will, therefore forever must and shall, ignite...
The poem makes no mention, nor does it allude to or reference indirectly, any lover, mistress, or wife, nor love itself, or sex. This, too, makes it unique in the collection. As does its close alignment with a Christian notion of redemption through spiritual nurture at the expense of, and in preference to, physical or material gratification.
This poem's sincere spirituality and apparently authentic – albeit merely implicit – religious note stands in extreme contrast to Sonnet 144 with its explicit sexual triangle, with its "man right fair" whom Shakespeare supposes to be in his mistress's 'hell'. Sonnet 146 sounds to all intents and purposes as if our Will was now, having clearly received and in Sonnet 145 acknowledged forgiveness from his wife Anne, seeking also reconciliation with God by mending his ways and abandoning his hedonistic lifestyle.
This is and has to be pure supposition, of course. But it rather anchors the previous Sonnet 145 where we ventured it belong: as the linchpin between the excesses of 144 with everything that goes before and the self-chastisement that is yet to come. It further supports our contention, explicated in our last episode, that Sonnet 145 is neither an accident, nor a randomly reallocated piece of juvenile trivia, nor an embarrassing lapse of Shakespeare's poetic powers, but a deliberate, conscious, and in fact highly effective caesura that fulfils the specific function of bringing things home now: both quite literally, preparing the ground for the poet to return to Stratford-upon-Avon and leave behind his mistress and his young man, and to metaphorically home in on the concluding thoughts of the collection, starting with this, Sonnet 146.
Editors rightly tend to point out that poems which deal with the juxtaposition of soul and body appear often at the time, citing once more Sir Philip Sidney, specifically his devotional poem that starts with the lines
Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust;
And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things;
and similarly extols a spiritual, divine, and therefore exalted and eternal love over any mortal, physical love.
The other poem you will frequently see quoted in relation to this one is Sonnet 28 in Bartholomew Griffin's 1596 sequence Fidessa, which Shakespeare may easily have been familiar with:
Well may my soul, immortal and divine,
That is imprisoned in a lump of clay,
Breathe out laments until this body pine,
That from her takes her pleasures all away...
And so we certainly cannot claim that Shakespeare's use of metaphor or symbolism here be original.
What is fascinating though, even startling, is its deployment here in the collection, and the zooming in on death as something that 'feeds on men' but that the soul can in turn 'feed' on and in doing so become immortal. It is a sombre, even disturbing, image that resolves itself poetically not in an expression of light and the promised eternal life, but in a subdued mere absence of death. It is as if Shakespeare here anticipates by three hundred years the tenor of nihilism, without expressly subscribing to it. And so arresting, compelling, is the conclusion "And death once dead, there's no more dying then" that it fed a 20th century writer her title for a crime novel...
Every so often when discussing these sonnets we take a step back and wonder: what brings this on? Why is William Shakespeare writing these words now? Mostly we can at best hazard a guess – sometimes more plausible, sometimes more speculative – though in this particular case even asking the question seems well nigh futile.
Except, the sonnet fits. The wave form charted by the 'Dark Lady Sonnets' brought us to what in our last episode we called a climax in Sonnet 144, which is the last poem to make direct reference to both the mistress and the male lover, followed by Sonnet 145 which in form and tone stops everything that's gone before dead and seems to prepare the ground for an end to all these affairs, acknowledging Anne, Shakespeare's wife of, at the time of publication, 24 years, as hating 'not me'.
Of course, we don't know when Shakespeare wrote this sonnet any more than we actually know when he wrote Sonnet 145 or any of the other sonnets, but the way these poems are arranged in the collection suggests – as we posited in our last episode – intent and purpose, and in this intent and purpose Sonnet 146 finds its place, seeking to do the 'good', the 'moral' thing of guiding the soul towards victory over the vices of the body.
This, though, is Shakespeare, and such simplicity as we might hope for or fear would tie everything together now and tidy things up with good triumphing over evil, God over the devil, pure love over sex, is not, of course, forthcoming.
The next poem, Sonnet 147, likens the poet's desire for his mistress to a disease, Sonnet 148 develops that theme into one of deception through impaired judgment, Sonnets 149 and 150 – implicitly perhaps illustrating such impairment – subject our poet to the mistress's whim and power, and Sonnet 151 once more then, like a beast that cannot be put down, gives rise to the thing that stands and falls in men depending on how sexually excited they are, thus blatantly and mischievously undermining any presumed 'purity' of the poet's person resulting from his reflections in this sonnet here.
That then leaves Sonnet 152, which, maybe appropriately, plays on people swearing false and true, and therefore on our poet by necessity dealing in both truth and lies in his poetry. And then two versions of the same classical allegory with some playfulness on Cupid and his 'torch' and the 'fire' of 'love' it can and, so our Will, therefore forever must and shall, ignite...
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If you spot a mistake or if you have any comments or suggestions, please use the contact page to get in touch.
To be kept informed of developments, please subscribe to the email list.
If you would like to donate, you can do so here. Thank you!