Sonnet 3

«

»

Sonnet 3

Sonnet 3 1609.jpg

–William Shakespeare

Sonnet 3 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a procreation sonnet within the Fair Youth sequence.

In the sonnet, the speaker is urging the man to whom he is writing to not waste his beauty by not having children. The intended recipient of this and other sonnets is a subject of scholarly debate, with some believing it to be William Herbert and others Henry Wriothesley, as well as other candidates.

The poem is typical of a Shakespearean sonnet in its form: fourteen decasyllabic lines, consisting of three quatrains and a concluding rhyming couplet.

Structure

Sonnet 3 is a typical Shakespearean or English sonnet. Shakespearean sonnets consist of three quatrains followed by a couplet, all in iambic pentameter and following the form's rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg. Each line of the first quatrain of Sonnet 3 exhibits a final extrametrical syllable or feminine ending. The first line additionally exhibits an initial reversal:

 /   ×    ×   /   ×    /     ×  /     ×   / (×)
Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest (3.1)

/ = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus. (×) = extrametrical syllable.

Analysis

In this sonnet, the poet is exhorting the 'fair youth' to marry and have a child, "Now is the time that face should form another", to immortalise his beauty. To ‘form again its shape’ is Shakespeare’s rendering of metamorphosis - compare Rom. 12.2, “be ye chaunged in your shape” [BB; koinè, “μεταμορφοùσθε”]; his choice of “forme” reflects Ovid’s “forma” used often of Narcissus.

The message is reiterated in the last lines of the poem: "But if thou live, remember'd not to be, / Die single, and thine image dies with thee." Not only will the youth lose his attractive face in death, but also his reflection in the mirror, again hinting at the story of Narcissus.

The complexity of early modern spelling and the issues raised for editors are demonstrated by Sonnet 3. For example, “vn-eard wombe,” where “vn-eard” can and is intended to be heard as ‘uneared’ (unfecundated), ‘uneared’ (untilled), ‘unaired’ and ‘unheired’ is best carried by the quarto’s irregular spelling.

Interpretations

• Timothy Spall, for the 2002 compilation album, When Love Speaks (EMI Classics)

Further reading

• Baldwin, T. W. On the Literary Genetics of Shakspeare's Sonnets. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1950.
• Hubler, Edwin. The Sense of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952.

First edition and facsimile

Variorum editions

Modern critical editions

• online text

External links

• Works related to Sonnet 3 (Shakespeare) at Wikisource
• A paraphrase of the sonnet
• Shakespeare's sonnets.com on Sonnet 3