The speaker turns to a close friend and points an accusing finger at Fortune, the goddess he blames for his misdeeds. He complains that she gave him no better life than one sustained by “public means”—likely his work in the theatre—which taught him coarse manners and left his name permanently stained, like a dye that won’t wash off a dyer’s hand. His own nature, he feels, has been tainted and almost absorbed by that crass public world. So he pleads for pity, asking the friend to wish him morally renewed. He promises to swallow any bitter medicine without protest, even double penance, if it will correct his faults. But the closing couplet shifts: he assures the friend that pity alone is enough to cure him. The mood is painfully vulnerable, mixing deep shame with a tender hope that a loved one’s compassion can lift a public stain.
Sonnet 111: O! for my sake do you with Fortune chide — Summary
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.