William Shakespears SONNET NUMBER THREE
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S SONNET NUMBER THREELook 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 rememb'red not to be, Die single, and thine image dies with thee. Shakespeare's "Sonnet No. Three" was written in A B A B, iambic pentameter, it has fourteen lines and first two lines are couplet. The sonnet is about a husbands attempt to convince his wife to want to have children. Shakespeare's audience consists of his wife who does not want children. In the sonnet, he relies on her fear of mortality to try to convince her to have children in order to achieve immortality. The argument of this sonnet is if his wife does not want children, then not only does she deny herself immortality, but she also denies
Thus allowing the reader to identify with the audience. The speaker is giving his beloved an ultimatum as it were. The one chance that she had of granting her beauty immortality by passing it down unto her children has passed. "For where is she so fair whose uneared womb/Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?" (ll 5-6). Perhaps the audience is so caught up with her self that not only does she not want the burden of children, but perhaps she doesn't want the burden of the speaker as well. "So thou through windows of thine age shalt see/Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time" (ll 11-12). She will loose her one chance at immortality, and worse yet, she will die alone and unloved. Shakespeare never makes it a point to say whether or not this is a married couple or not, or even if it's a man talking to his lover or a woman talking to hers. If the audience choose to have children, then she too will be able to look into her children's faces and see her eternal youth just as her mother sees her youth in the audience's face. She is resistant to the idea of having children. Now one will start to age and look like one's mother. But if the reader looks beyond this simple pronoun, then the reader will notice that with these four lines together, Shakespeare is describing how natural it is for both men and women to want to have children. But with the next two lines, "Or who is he so fond will be the tomb/ Of his self-love, to stop posterity" (ll 7-8), Shakespeare now uses the pronoun 'he', which is the basis of the unclearness as to whether or not the audience is a woman.
Common topics in this essay:
Shakespeare's Sonnet,
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNET,
audience woman,
try convince,
wife children,
tillage thy,
lovely april prime,
thou windows thine,
art thy mother's,
thou art thy,
thy mother's glass,
thine age,
wrinkles thy,
thine image,
thy golden,
single thine,
die single,
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