Sonnet 6 might be considered a companion piece to Sonnet 5 as the speaker opens by referring to the metaphor he used in the earlier sonnet, the distillation of flowers.
First Quatrain
In the first quatrain, the speaker begins with the adverbial conjunction “then” that ties Sonnet 6 “Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface” to Sonnet 5. He tells the young man not to let old age destroy his youth, before he has produced an heir. Metaphorically, the speaker employs winter as old age, summer as youth, and the distillation process as the offspring.
The speaker further commands to young man to “Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place / With beauty’s treasure, ere it be self-kill’d.” He is telling the young man to distill his beauty by pouring it into a glass bottle, as the perfume or liquor would be. And again, the speaker attaches a “before it’s too late” tag to his command.
Second Quatrain
In the second quatrain, the speaker shifts to a finance metaphor, by claiming that fulfilling his duty of producing offspring is a legitimate use of his beauty; by lending his beauty and fair qualities to his offspring, he makes the cosmos happy, as people who are willing to repay their loans are satisfied by complying with the regulations for borrowing.
Then the speaker introduces an idea he has not broached before; he now suggests that if the young man produces ten heirs, then ten times the happiness will ensue. He tries to show what a bargain ten heirs would be by numerically stating, “ten times happier, be it ten for one.”
Third Quatrain
The speaker is so taken with the new idea that he repeats the number: “Ten times thyself were happier than thou art, / If ten of thine ten times refigur’d thee.” The speaker uses the full weight of his argument in insisting that ten offspring would offer ten times more happiness, and then he asks, “Then what could death do, if thou shouldst depart, / Leaving thee living in posterity?”
The speaker wants the young man to consider a possible bid for immortality by producing numerous offspring to replace himself. According to the speaker’s rhetorical question, the young man could defeat death because his heirs would be “Leaving thee living” long after the lad had grown old, withered, and left this world.
The Couplet
In the couplet, the speaker commands the young man again not to be “self-will’d,” only thinking of his own comfort and pleasure in the present, without thought for the future; the speaker wants the lad to realize that his pleasing qualities are too precious to allow “worms” to be “thine heir.”
The speaker uses the ugliness as well as the beauty and glory of nature, whichever suits his purpose, to convince the young man that procreating heirs is a most important duty. The speaker tries to be convincing by dramatizing old age and death as most undesirable, especially if one has not taken a precaution against self-annihilation by producing offspring.
Other articles on Shakespeare:
Sonnet Commentaries
Sonnet 1, Sonnet 2, Sonnet 3, Sonnet 4, Sonnet 5, Sonnet 6, Sonnet 7, Sonnet 8, Sonnet 9, Sonnet 10, Sonnet 11, Sonnet 12, Sonnet 18, Sonnet 19, Sonnet 116, Sonnet 126, Sonnet 130
