Sonnet 46 in the 1609 Quarto.

Part of the “Fair Youth” sequence of Shakespearean sonnets, Sonnet 46 takes up the conflict between eye and heart; each believes it has a stronger claim on the beautiful young man beloved by the Bard. It is the first of a pair of linked sonnets. Both this and Sonnet 47 deal with the relationship between heart and eyes.

The result is a tussle between the two. The eye sees the young man, and the heart —representing the inner romantic— challenges it. The conflict is played out like competing advocates in a court of law. This is especially so in the second quatrain.

It is important to understand Sonnet 46 in light of Renaissance beliefs about Neo-platonism; that is, that there is a difference between the substance of something, containing its true essence, and its “shadow” or weaker manifestation in real life. The “mortal war” between eye and heart takes on deeper meaning when seen in the context of Neo-platonic ideas. Shakespeare and other poets of the time, like John Donne, would have been fully aware of these concepts.

The eventual truce between eye and heart is explored further in the next sonnet in the sequence, Sonnet 47.

Portrait of Henry Wriothesley, a possible candidate for the Fair Youth.

Note that there is a strange theory surrounding the number 46. Shakespeare was said to have translated the 46th Psalm in the King James Version of the Bible because he would have been 46 years old at the time. The 46th word of the psalm is ‘shake’, and the 46th word from the end is ‘spear’. Is this co-incidence? No one knows.

See Don Paterson – Reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Faber & Faber, 2012
Helen Vendler The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets Harvard University Press
Shakespeare’s Sonnets with Three Hundred Years of Commentary, Associated University Press 2007
BBC Podcast, Melvyn Bragg, “In Our Time” Shakespeare’s Sonnets