From time to time, I am posting my thoughts on
particular Shakespeare Sonnets. For now, I am proceeding in order.
Is it for
fear to wet a widow's eye
That thou
consumest thyself in single life?
Ah! if thou
issueless shalt hap to die,
The world
will wail thee, like a makeless wife;
The world will
be thy widow and still weep
That thou no
form of thee hast left behind,
When every
private widow well may keep
By
children's eyes her husband's shape in mind.
Look what an
unthrift in the world doth spend
Shifts but
his place, for still the world enjoys it;
But beauty's
waste hath in the world an end,
And kept
unused, the user so destroys it.
No love
toward others in that bosom sits
That on
himself such murderous shame commits.
As in the
previous Sonnets, the voice of the narrative is imploring the Fair Youth to
marry and have children. The subject of all this attention is initially
questioned. Does he fear that he will leave someone a widow if he marries and
then dies? The Fair Youth is next lectured that he will be depriving the world
of the continuation of his own beauty should he die without progeny. We have
heard similar arguments before in this sequence of poems.
The last two
lines of this Sonnet catch my attention.
No love toward others in that bosom sits
That on himself such murderous shame commits.
I like these
lines from an aesthetic perspective, but they seem to be introducing something
new into the Sonnets. The words seem a little angry, and perhaps they are even
a little desperate. By this time in the sequence of Sonnets, the voice of the
poem has used all sorts of arguments and devices to try to convince his subject
to marry and have children. These lines may indicate a certain level of
frustration.
Shakespeare’s
motivation for writing these Sonnets has puzzled people for generations. I
myself have ruminated upon these motivations in my previous posts. Regardless
of the question of whether Shakespeare was trying to speak for himself here or
not, this turn into what appears to be slightly exasperated language seems to further
illustrate that the poet has created a multifaceted character in the voice of
the poem. There are indeed many sides to this speaker.
As I have
explored in previous posts, this unseen narrator is capable of sublime
language, humor and allegories that range from the common to the clever to the
soaring. Now, if I am reading this accurately, a little bit of vexation has
been infused.
My commentary on additional Sonnets:
