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Shakespeare’s sonnet 3
- 1. Nick Jehn
- 2. “Look in thy glass, and tell “Now is the time that the face thou viewest…” face should form another.”
- 3. “Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest….” eguile t
- 4. “For where is she so fair whose unear'd womb Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?”
- 5. “Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee….” “So thou through windows of thine age shall see….”
- 6. “But if thou live, remember'd not to be, Die single, and thine image dies with thee.”
- 7. [1]Burrow, Colin N. March 2000. “Shakespeare’s Wrinkled Eye: Sonnet 3 Lines 11-12.” Notes and Queries. Volume 47, Issue 1. Pages 90-91. [2]Delahoyde, Michael. "Shakespeare's Sonnets." Shakespeare's Sonnets. 12 Feb. 2013. <http://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/shakespeare/sonnet s.html>. [3]Holden, R. Bradley. Summer 2006. “Shakespeare’s Sonnet 3.” The Explicator. Volume 64, Issue 4. Pages 194-197.
- 8. Slide 2: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cyberkode/85315039/ Slide 3: http://www.flickr.com/photos/burge5000/172768882 / Slide 4: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zen/484839501/ Slide 5, Left: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidden/2437523734 / Slide 5, Right: http://www.flickr.com/photos/burge5000/172768882 / Slide 6: http://www.flickr.com/photos/retinafunk/542825153 2/
Editor's Notes
- Shakespeare’s third sonnet is a part of those thought to be written to a “young man” (sonnets 1-126). More specifically, it centers around the idea of marriage and reproduction, as do many of the early sonnets. According to Delahoyde, these all tend to raise questions about Shakespeare’s sexuality, amidst a myriad of other speculations about his existence as a poet at all, let alone a literate human being [2].
- In the first two lines of the sonnet, the speaker tells the young man to step back, look at himself, and realize that now is his time to recreate the image he sees before him. In other words, he needs to see that he is far too beautiful to not carry that beauty on in his children.While all of the early sonnets are connected in theme by the idea of procreation, sonnet three is different in that it expresses this theme through mirror imagery, introduced here in the first quatrain. Holden claims that by using these images, the speaker is suggesting that the beauty the youth sees reflected in the mirror can be “replicated” in the same way through sexual reproduction [3].Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cyberkode/85315039/
- The second part of the first quatrain reinforces the idea of “replication” and “renewal” as the parallel between mirror imagery and the theme of procreation. These words offer the idea that the mirror depicts a finite image that will only last if the young man is to have children. On the contrary, his children and children’s children provide the possibility of infinite beauty with each passing generation. The speaker, as will be the case throughout the remainder of the sonnet, begins to present consequences for the young man should he choose to not heed his advice. In this case, he says that the young man will “beguile,” or cheat, the world out of something beautiful, while, according to Holden, also keeping a potential wife from experiencing the renewing process of having children [3].Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/burge5000/172768882/
- The second quatrain strays from the structure of the rest of the poem by abandoning all imagery of mirrors. Instead, the speaker provides us with agricultural images that combine with sexual innuendo to stress the fact that the young man is truly beautiful. The first two lines of the quatrain beg the question: “What kind of girl wouldn’t be attracted to a man like you and want to have your children?” If the speaker’s advice remains ignored, the fair lady’s “unear’d” womb will remain so, and its crops (potential children) will never be harvested (born). Holden claims that although the speaker may love himself, his own body will become the “tomb of his self love,” and will die along with him if he does not pass it on to his offspring [3].Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zen/484839501/
- The speaker reintroduces mirrors into the third quatrain of the sonnet by bringing into play a different “mother,” one that Holden suspects to be the actual birth mother of the young man [3]. The speaker states that as his future offspring can be seen in his own reflection, the same was always true for his mother. Thus, the “unblessed mother” in the first quatrain refers not only to the young man’s possible wife, but also to his biological mother, both of which will suffer if he is to not have children. Holden explains that when the speaker says “April of her prime,” this is simply using seasonal imagery to echo the fact that the mother can share in the same renewal as the young man if he has children with his spouse [3].In the second half of this quatrain, the speaker uses windows rather than mirrors as the young man’s lens. Also, contrary to the rest of the sonnet, the speaker is not offering negative consequences, but rather, positive ones. The “windows” here refer merely to the young man’s eyes and what he sees when he is older, but Burrow claims that “wrinkled” can take on multiple meanings. In the case of his face, these wrinkles are obviously something that comes with age and will naturally disrupt vision. However, during Shakespeare’s time, many of the windows were not entirely transparent and provided a distorted, or “wrinkled,” view themselves. This makes Shakespeare’s use of imagery increasingly effective here [1].Images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidden/2437523734/http://www.flickr.com/photos/burge5000/172768882/
- The closing couplet of the sonnet follows suit with most of the procreation sonnets by leaving the reader with an image of death. The speaker recalls the image of the young man in the mirror one last time, stating that if he dies without marrying and having children, his beauty will die along with him. Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/retinafunk/5428251532/