Sonnet Number 3 Essay Research Paper WILLIAM

Sonnet Number 3 Essay, Research Paper

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S SONNET NUMBER THREE Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewestNow 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 wombDisdains the tillage of thy husbandry?Or who is he so fond will be the tombOf his self-love, to stop posterity?Thou art thy mother’s glass , and she in theeCalls 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 try and convince her to have children. “Now is the time that face should form another” (ll. 2). There is a double meaning here, now is the time one will be getting older. Now one will start to age and look like one’s mother. It is also the time to have a child, and pass on one’s beauty and youth. The speaker is also implying a sense of urgency, that if she is going to ever have children, it must be soon because now is the time “Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest/Thou dust beguile the world, unbless some mother” (ll 3-4). Here he is saying that if one does not have a child, then not only does one go against nature, but one sin’s against one’s mother who hoped to achieve immortality through her children and their children their after. Here is where Shakespeare makes the first illusion that the audience is a woman by identifying the audience in reference to the audience’s mother. 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. “For where is she so fair whose uneared womb/Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?” (ll 5-6). Here Shakespeare creates an image relating to sex. He presents a new question to her, asking if she does not want children because she does not like sex. This is also the first time that Shakespeare uses the pronoun ’she’, which helps to further imply that the audience is a woman. 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. 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. When Shakespeare asks “Where is she so fair” (ll 5) he asks the question, ‘where can a woman be found who “disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?”‘ (ll 5). A similar question is asked about men, “who is he so fond…of his self love” (ll 7-8). These two questions are meant to show that it is just as unlikely to find a wife who disdains having sex with her husband, as it is unlikely to find a man who would rather masturbate then want to make love to a real woman. This may be a little lurid for some tastes, but considering the speaker is dealing with someone who clearly doesn’t want to have sex, the audience needs to be reminded just how unnatural this really is. But these lines do not clarify yet that the audience is a woman only because this was not their purpose. Shakespeare only wanted to illustrate the normal behavior of men and women in matters of procreation. ‘Womb’ in line five is rhymed with ‘tomb’ in line seven to help further compare the similarities within the stanza. Wives are no more a prisoner of their virginity then men are prisoners to their ’self-love’.

But by this point, Shakespeare still has not clearly stated if the audience is a man or a woman. Further evidence that the audience is a woman can be found in the lines “Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee/Calls back the lovely April of her prime” (ll. 9-10). Simply paraphrasing, the speaker says she is the embodiment of her mother’s youth, further comparing the audience to her mother and thus again implying that the audience is indeed at least a woman, if not the speaker’s wife. Supposedly, it can be interpreted that the audience is a man, mer