SONNET 6 HAND: Then let not Winter's ragged hand deface

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 refigur'd 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.


SONNET INDEX


Mnemonic Image: Winter's ragged HAND

Memory Passage: Beauty's ROSE in a World War I TRENCH is reflected in a GLASS also showing the face of the EXECUTOR, Death, who admires the FRAME of Bone which holds the mirror, reaches out a ragged HAND


Idiosyncratic Abstract: The Wragged HAND of Death masturbating the Young Man while he gazes upon his portrait. Worms ooze one after another from the Young Man's cock as he ejaculates over and over onto the sterile ground.


Couplet Imagery: Narcissus self-willed, still fixed on his image in the mirror, while Death shadows over him and ravenous worms wait beneath him inherit his tasty flesh.

Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fair,
    To be Death's conquest and make worms thine heir.

Self-willed, all light quibbles aside, is for the Young Man to continue in his Narcissistic practices. Again, Shakespeare is using his beauty as the carrot, with the implied duty to the world. The Young Man is so beautiful, fair, that he owes the world the legacy beauty. All clear. These themes we already know well. In addition to beguiling to world of his beauty, being self-willed will also make him Death's conquest where his only legacy will be to worms. But note the use of self-willed. 

Sonnet 6 picks up right where 5 left off:

But flow'rs distilled, though they with winter meet,
   Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

Shakespeare implores the Young Man, if he has understood the meaning of Sonnet 5,

Then let not Winter's ragged hand deface 
In thee thy summer ere thou be distilled:

Old Man Winter / Time hasn't gone anywhere and with his ragged hand is ready and waiting to deface, scar, reshape, line and wrinkle the Young Man's summer beauty before it is distilled. Remark, again, the striking of the note of the face, the face of summery beauty wherein the gaze of the other dwells. (Shadow image of the persona as a mask.)

Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place
With beauty's treasure, ere it be self-killed. 

Finally, here is the answer to Sonnet 5: put your essence into a vial, your treasure, your seed, your semen, your genetic legacy, beauty's treasure, put it into some place where it can be used. Where Beauty will linger on to still have effect. Don't waste your treasure / semen but put it in some sweet place / womb where it will increase. All before it is self-killed. Note alliance with self-willed.

Booth comments casually over the "incidental wit" of  make sweet some vile, something vile. Regardless of intentionality or the absence thereof, it provides a useful mnemonic image: the homosexual Shakespeare secreting in his distaste of the vagina. Such striking images - regardless of their truth, strike deeply into the memory.

The lines, treasure thou some place with beauty's treasure, is evocative, conjuring up chthonian caves, reminding me a passage from Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae:

Women's body is a secret, sacred space. It is a temenos or ritual precinct, a Greek word I adopt for the discussion of art. In the marked-off space of a woman's body, nature operates at its darkest and most mechanical. Every woman is a priestess guarding the temenos of daemonic mysteries. Virginity is categorically different for the sexes. A boy becoming a man quests for experience. The penis is like eye or hand, an extension of self reaching outward. But a girl is a sealed vessel that must be broken into by force. The female body is the prototype of all sacred spaces from cave shrine to temple and church. - Sexual Personae. p 23

Thracian sanctuary the Womb Cave - source

Gupteshwar Cave,  Shiva Linga - source

The treasure cavern under the ruins of Xal Jarka. - source

Ellora Caves - source

Animation of sperm swimming to egg in uterus - source

Portal Chartres Cathedral - source

That use is not forbidden usury, 
Which happies those that pay the willing loan;

Now in Q2 we are back in the Pawn Shop, where usury is loaning out money at an exorbitantly high rate of interest. But in the case of the Young Man's treasure, the loan of his semen to the womb to create a child is an happy investment of his beauty's treasure. As the child or more children will continue to increase the Young Man's Beauty's treasure, the loan is happily paid, even ten for one.


That's for thyself to breed another thee,
Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;

The more investments the Young Man makes in the breeding of his children, the more he increases fair creatures and himself, and the happier he shall be.

Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,
If ten of thine ten times refigur'd thee:

What would normally be a horrible burden of debt, multiplying on itself, is here the source of wealth.

Then what could Death do, if thou shouldst depart,
Leaving thee living in posterity?

Because in the end, the war is with Death. Death is the collector. And the more times the Young Man has re-figured his beautiful self, the more power he has over death.

Booth has interesting commentary regarding Leaving thee living which offers helpful mnemonic imagery: leaving in a botanical sense resonates with the line from S.5: lusty leaves quite gone and the defacement of summer by the fall at the beginning of this sonnet. It also references the mathematical acrobatics of Q2 and Q3, a sum subtracted leaves a remainder. And most to the point, the Young Man leaves heirs to whom his beauty / wealth is bequeathed.

    Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fair,
    To be Death's conquest and make worms thine heir.

So turn away from being self-willed, enchanted by your own reflection, dream, for Death stands ready to conquer you and the only inheritors of your sweet flesh will be worms.

Booth and others have commented on the sexual undertones of the couplet: self-willed being masturbation and conquest in a sexual sense. There is the always prurient interpretation: stop masturbating and loving only yourself, you are too beautiful to have only Death as a lover and to allow his worms to penetrate your flesh and devour you.

An image here of Death fucking the Young Man in the ass and ejaculating worms into him. The Dance of Death, the petit mort.

“What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace. they would defile it, and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would be always alive.” - Oscar Wilde, Dorian Gray

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