"Editorial Conjecture" and the Critical Afterlife of Shakespeare's Sonnet 146

Abstract: Sonnet 146 is one of the most critically discussed and frequently anthologized of William Shakespeare's Sonnets . Yet historical criticism and editorial tradition alike have routinely proposed a substantial change from how the sonnet is printed in the 1609 Quarto (or "Q"). In Q, the first three words of the second line repeat the last three words of the first line: "my sinfull earth." From Edmond Malone's first critical edition in 1780 to contemporary editions today, editors have commonly treated this repetition as a printing error and have regularly interposed their own conjectures in place of the ostensibly erroneous words. In this article, I challenge this long-standing editorial presumption of error, and consider the possibility that this extra-metrical crux is actually a purposeful choice. Specifically, I suggest that the doubled words are the rhetorical device of anadiplosis, common among Shakespeare's contemporaries, and even appearing in other works by Shakespeare himself. Reconsidering this long-standing crux allows us to sidestep the innumerable attempts at correcting what needs no correction, and to instead puzzle out possible meanings from the text as printed.