for the child has the ability to reheat the blood made
cold through age.
Sonnet 2 fi ts in with the overarching theme of the
fi rst 17 sonnets of WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’s SONNET
SEQUENCE, all of which concern procreation as a way of
defeating death and achieving a kind of immortality. In
form, it is an ENGLISH SONNET, with the typical rhyme
scheme of abab, cdcd, efef, gg.
Thematically, Sonnet 2 treats beauty as a commod-
ity in which to invest. In line 6, for example, beauty is
called the “treasure of thy lusty days.” The poem argues
that a beautiful young person who does not procreate
wastes this precious resource. In signifi cant ways, the
poem harkens back to Matthew 25:14–30, the parable
of the talents. In that parable, Jesus praises “good and
faithful servants” who invest their master’s money and
make a profi t, but he condemns a “wicked and lazy
servant” who, out of fear, buries his master’s money
and then returns it without interest. For Shakespeare,
the handsome young man who does not procreate is a
kind of bad servant because he does not use beauty to
produce additional income (i.e., children) for his mas-
ter. This, says Shakespeare, is a “thriftless” way to act.
Sonnet 2 begins with an ironic inversion of a con-
ventional image of the sexual act being described as
“plowing.” Instead of a man plowing a woman’s fi eld in
order to seed it, here the man’s body becomes the
plowed fi eld, and time itself is the plowman. Forty
winters plow deep trenches—wrinkles—in his fore-
head. This plowing is sterile, producing only ugly tat-
ters in the “proud livery” of the friend’s good looks.
The poem’s message is that the friend should get to his
own productive “plowing” before time reverses the
gender roles and “plows” his face. If he does so, the
friend will then be able to look back at the product of
his efforts, and the resulting pride will warm his old,
tired blood because the “fair child” will be the bearer of
his own beauty and blood line. The friend will, thus,
be newly remade metaphorically.
See also SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS (OVERVIEW).
FURTHER READING
Crosman, Robert. “Making Love out of Nothing at All: The
Issue of Story in Shakespeare’s Procreation Sonnets.” SQ,
no. 4 (1990): 470–488.
Gregory M. Sadlek
Shakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnet 3 (“Look in thy
glass and tell the face thou viewest”) WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE (1599) Of the 154 sonnets written by
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, the fi rst 17 form what is known
as the procreation SONNET set. These poems urge the
reader to have sex both for enjoyment and for procre-
ation. They also emphasize marriage as the fulfi llment
of social obligations and the underlying structure of
society. Part of the encouragement to procreate is a
desire for preservation (of family, humanity, and Eng-
lish society), and Sonnet 3 emphasizes this idea of con-
tinuation.
In the poem, the speaker urges the audience, in this
case, the “LOVELY BOY,” to begin considering producing
offspring. The idea is that the lovely boy is so attractive
that if he does not produce an heir, the world will be
cheated forever when his image is lost. Finding a will-
ing woman should not be very diffi cult, either, since
few women exist who would deny the lovely boy. The
speaker goes on to remind his audience that he is the
mirror for his parents, as his child would be for him.
The poem concludes with a dire warning: If you die
without reproducing, you will be forgotten and your
image will go to the grave with you.
Sonnet 3 is fairly unique among the procreation set.
Unlike its companions, which focus primarily on images
of life, Sonnet 3 contains paradoxical alternatives that
combine life and death. For instance, bleak images such
as an unblessed womb (l. 4), disdained husbandry (l. 5),
and stopped posterity (l. 8) are paired with correspond-
ing images of life, such as replication (l. 2), the accepting
woman (ll. 5–6), and the not-foolish man (ll. 7–8). This
series of complications is connected to the notion of
dédoublement, which is an integral part of all of Shake-
speare’s sonnets. In literature, dédoublement (French for
“split”) is the process of aesthetic self-doubling, or dou-
ble consciousness. It can occur within a single character
or within a literary construct. A character might be
involved in an unexpected situation, which results in a
sudden escape from his or her self-conception, and thus
be forced to reevaluate his or her fundamental identity.
Textually, dédoublement is a simultaneous fragmentation
and binding through writing and images. Linking con-
structive and destructive ideas within a text leads to a
cycle of division and repetition that both informs andSHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS: SONNET 3 361