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SONNET 3
by William Shakespeare
Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another,
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime;
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.
But if thou live remembered not to be,
Die single, and thine image dies with thee.
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Shakespeare’s famous sonnet is 14 lines, in iambic pentameter, with an ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG rhyme scheme. The poem is widely believed to be addressed to “the fair youth,” a young man about whom several of the Bard’s other sonnets are written. The poem is primarily about beauty and procreation, as we will examine below:
Lines 1 through 4:
Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another,
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
In the first quatrain, the Speaker tells the subject that he should procreate. To make this argument, the Speaker appears to the Fair Youth’s physical appearance. In line one, he encourages the subject to “look into the glass” – notice how good looking he is – and then to “form another” (i.e. have offspring.) Lines 3 and 4 are essentially an argument that to deprive the world of passing on that attractiveness to offspring would be unfair.
Lines 5 through 8:
For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
In this quatrain, the Speaker explains in more detail *why* the Faith Youth should have a youth. The Speaker compares the subject to a farmer, and the hypothetical mother’s womb to the earth, and he argues that there are no women who would turn down his, uh, “husbandry” (i.e. seed planting.) Lines seven and eight implore the subject to think toward the future and to not be too focused on self-love in the present. There’s an implication here that the Fair Youth’s fairness will eventually fade. Thus, if he does not procreate, while he is attractive, he may lose the opportunity to do so later, costing the world his beauty.
Lines 9 through 12:
Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime;
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.
In line 9, the Speaker returns to the metaphor of the glass (mirror) and he tells the Fair Youth that his current beauty is a reflection of the beauty previously possessed by his mother. Her beauty now lives in him “and shee in thee Calls back to the lovely April of her prime.”
Lines 11 and 12 make the case that though the subject’s mother is now aged, she can still see the reflection of her earlier beauty, through her son. It is clear that he wishes for the subject that he have this opportunity or reflection with his own offspring.
Lines 13 and 14:
But if thou live remembered not to be,
Die single, and thine image dies with thee.
The final two lines provide the consequences for the subject, should he not heed the Speaker’s advice. Should the young man not have children, he will go unremembered – both his life and his present beauty, with the latter seeming to be the more important of the two to the Speaker.
That last line really lands a punch, eh?
This Sonnet exists within the long tradition of advice poems and music, with just a touch of creepiness added in for good measure. “You have your mother’s hotness in you and you must pass it on.” The Speaker seems as interested in preserving a bloodline as bettering the young man. I am interested in other interpretations here.
What would this type of scenario look like in a story or in real life? I am now imagining an alternative version of the Harry Potter series where Snape lives a long life and becomes heavily invested in Harry passing on his genetics to another generation… because he wants “Lily’s eyes” to live on.
