Sonnet 111

Constancy and the Muse

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

Notes

TLN 1543classical allusion
“guilty goddess of my harmful deeds”
Fortune was a Roman goddess imagined as turning a great wheel that raised and cast down men without reason or mercy. The poet calls her 'guilty' because she assigned him a low, public trade rather than a station of dignity — making her responsible for what he has become. Calling her 'guilty' is unusual; it shifts blame from the poet to the force that placed him.
classical Fortune and her wheel
TLN 1545historical topical
“public means which public manners breeds”
'Public means' is a livelihood earned before a paying public audience — almost certainly a reference to acting. Elizabethan actors were socially suspect: they were legally classified near vagabonds unless they had a noble patron, and the stage was attacked as a school of immorality. The line says that earning a living this way inevitably shapes — 'breeds' — a coarser, more public set of habits and values.
TLN 1546archaic vocab
“my name receives a brand”
A 'brand' is a mark burned into the skin of criminals and escaped servants in early modern England as a permanent sign of disgrace. Livestock were branded; convicted rogues and those whipped for vagrancy could be branded on the shoulder or cheek. The poet says his public livelihood has stamped him with this kind of indelible stigma — not on his body, but on his name and reputation.
TLN 1547rhetorical device
“my nature is subdu'd / To what it works in, like the dyer's hand”
A dyer — someone who colors cloth in vats of pigment — cannot wash the dye out of his hands; the color becomes permanent. The simile makes the point that the poet's character ('nature') has been stained by long immersion in his public trade the same way: the work has entered him and cannot be scrubbed out. 'Subdu'd' means overcome, brought under the power of something else.
TLN 1551archaic vocab
“Potions of eisel 'gainst my strong infection”
'Eisel' is an archaic word for vinegar — specifically the strong, bitter vinegar used as a medicine and as a liquid of penance. The image is of the poet agreeing to dose himself with the harshest available remedy, accepting the bitterness without complaint. Vinegar was used in early modern medicine to treat fevers and purge infection, and the word carried a secondary resonance from the vinegar offered to Christ on the cross.