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Mass.: Blackwell, 2003.
Vendler, Helen. The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Cambridge,
Mass., and London: Belknap/Harvard, 1997.
Wells, Stanley. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare
Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
———. Looking for Sex in Shakespeare. Cambridge and New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Martha Kalnin Diede
Shakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnet 1 (“From fair-
est creatures we desire increase”) WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE (1599) The general themes of WIL-
LIAM SHAKESPEARE’s Sonnet 1 is the topic of parenthood,
despite ostensibly being addressed to a young male
friend. What is extraordinary is his subversive use of
the Petrarchan tradition popular in the period—a tra-
dition of poetry in which a highly idealized person,
most often a woman, was praised and the poet declared
his unworthiness to praise that person. Shakespeare
proves his mastery of the tradition while using it non-
traditionally. In Sonnet 1, the poet addresses the male
fi gure as though he were a woman, thus demonstrating
that men not only enjoyed receiving the same fl attery
as women of the period, they also shared many of the
same concerns about aging, procreative ability, and
death. Shakespeare argues that his subject is the “fair-
est,” the most “ornament[al],” person that ever lived.
He argues that that the entirety of humanity will suffer
if his subject fails to engender an “heir” (have a child).
Unchanged through time, according to this SONNET, is
the argument that a man lives on through his children.
Shakespeare’s argument also supports the social, eco-
nomic, and religious strictures of his time, but does so
artistically.
In the fi rst quatrain, Shakespeare’s subtlety lies in
the reminder to his friend that a man is no different
than any born thing—it must die. He then declares
that his friend is narcissistic because he loves only
himself, not the world or the woman necessary to
engender a child. And just as the rose dies because of
the natural run of time, so in lines 5 and 6 do we fi nd
that there is “famine” in the world because his friend
refuses to “feed” any person but himself with the “self-
substantial” abundance that he represents.
Some critics maintain that Sonnet 1, because of its
foreshadowing of topics to come later in the SONNET
SEQUENCE, was actually composed later in the series, and
that either Thomas Thorpe (the publisher) saw how well
it worked as an introductory piece, or that Shakespeare
wrote it as an afterthought to tie his various topics and
imagery together, just as one writes the table of contents
after writing the chapters of a book. Even if the sonnet is
of later date, that does not affect the mastery of the form,
imagery, or selection of exactly the right word. This son-
net’s very placement as fi rst sets more weight on it,
although perhaps, as some critics claim, it is inferior to
some later in the series. But it is diffi cult to tie such
opposites as increase and decrease, or famine and abun-
dance, together cohesively. The very topics struggle
against each other for mastery, yet Shakespeare manages
to hold them together artistically.
See also ITALIAN (PETRARCHAN) SONNETS, SHAKE-
SPEARE’S SONNETS (OVERVIEW).
Leslie J. Ormandy
Shakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnet 2 (“When forty
winters shall besiege thy brow”) WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE (1599) Given that human physical
beauty is transitory, this SONNET considers how fl eeting
beauty is best used and offers a strategy to prolong it.
In the beginning, the persona addresses a handsome
young man and asks him to imagine himself at 40. At
that age, the friend will be asked where his beauty,
represented here as a kind of clothing (“proud livery”
or a “tattered weed”), lies. If, on the one hand, he
replies that his beauty still resides in his own “deep-
sunken eyes,” he would be making a shameful reply—
shameful not only because little beauty would be left in
those eyes but also because the friend would be con-
fessing to the wasteful hoarding of beauty. If, on the
other hand, the friend could point to a “fair child”
whom he had engendered, he would have successfully
invested his own beauty and proven himself worthy of
praise. The “fair child” would “sum his count,” an
accounting metaphor which means that the child
would render the friend’s fi nancial accounts balanced.
The poem concludes with a COUPLET stating that to
engender a child is to remake oneself when one is old,
360 SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS: SONNET 1