WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S SONNET NUMBER THREE
             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 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 immortality to the family name. The first quatrain introduces the theme with the image of reflected beauty, "Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest" (ll. 1). The audience, his lover, is supposed to say that she sees the face of youth and beauty. It is assumed that the audience is the speaker's wife, because if they weren't married, it would be unlikely for them to hold such conversation. She is resistant to the idea of having children. The reason is not made clear in the sonnet, allowing the reader the opportunity to insert his own ideas as to why the audience does not want children. Thus allowing the reader to identify with the audience. But the speaker hopes to play on her fears of aging and dying to ...