Commentary - Sonnet 3

Very unique is this third sonnet.

This is the only Procreation Sonnet that considers the female of the species concerning the young man. These first seventeen sonnets are supposedly written to encourage the "sweet youth" to marry, and two lines are devoted to the woman who might be his bride. Not only does Shakespeare waste few words on women in his alleged attempt to encourage his friend to choose one for a life partnership, the precious few words used to bring light to their plight are anonymous, and downright disrespectful: “...where is she so fair whose uneared womb/ Distains the tillage of thy husbandry?” In essence, "It doesn't need to be love, just pick a pretty girl. Who would refuse you?" Then in line 9, his own mother is mentioned, but only as a tool for selfishness. She gave him beauty and can look upon him and remember her youth. Doesn't he want the same thing?

How could Shakespeare be so misogynistic and short sighted? It brings into question the purpose for writing these sonnets. Many scholars hypothesize that there an is a young man in the picture, to whom both Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece and possibly the sonnets (in code) are passionately dedicated. Henry Wriothesley, the Third Earl of Southhampton was ninteen, and a documented patron of the arts. The speculation goes that a Lord Burghley, Queen Elizabeth's lord treasurer, wanted the young Wriothesley to marry his granddaughter. Lord Burghley took Wriotheseley in as his ward when his father died, educated him at Cambridge and raised him to manhood. Wriothesley refused the match, though he faced (and paid) a large fine, condemning the institution of marriage. Scholars think that in the years before Wriothesley came of age, at twenty-one, the Lord did everything he could to change his mind, and perhaps poetry was one tactic. A poem exists by John Clapham called Narcissis warning that self love leads to death. The poem is dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. That it was commissioned or of free will is any one's guess, but the young Earl was clearly being pressured on all sides to marry the granddaughter of the most powerful man in England.

He was being pressured to marry.

And yet, not one of the sonnets mentions marriage.

Could it be that a very powerful Lord would commission a master poet to produce seventeen sonnets with the intent to persuade his ward to marry, and Shakespeare produced what amounts to “Seventeen Reasons to Have Casual Sex?” Could they have been written as opposition to Clapham’s poem? Or is it more likely that Shakespeare, clearly friendly with the Earl, would write seventeen procreation sonnets to mock the situation. Could he have written seventeen satires set upon comforting the Earl and making light of his situation: "Do not marry, my friend, but do spread your beautiful seed. Your narcissism lies not in your decision not to share your life with a partner (have many partners! who would deny you?) but in your refusal to recreate your image in a child."

Francis Meres, a known author, wrote in 1598 that Shakespeare, "surged sonnets among his private friends." Imagine two friends, who are perhaps lovers, enjoying the latest in the set of joke poetry one has written to comfort the other. Wriothesley faced a huge debt and pressure from a man who who had great influence on his life. I do not deny the love relationship between the young man and Shakespeare (which blossoms quickly and fiercely at sonnet 18), but the purpose of the first sonnets, I contend, was a means to comfort a worried friend. They are beautiful farce after farce, that praise the good qualities in a loved one, and muse at the immense stakes Lord Burghley and Clapham have bestowed upon him. Narcissis warns that selfishness and singlehood leads to death. The sonnets mock Clapham’s opinion: "Die single and thine image dies with thee.”

Consider this also:

"...the truest poetry is the most feigning, and lovers are given to poetry; and what they swear in poetry may be said as lovers they do feign" - As You Like It (Act III.iii.15-17).

Furthermore, it not possible that the man who created such remarkable, admirable female characters as Rosalind, Beatrice, Juliet, Cordelia, Portia, Desdemona and many others could have a such a blase opinion of women. True, this is the author whose words Hamlet utters the notorious phrase in anger, "Frailty, thy name is woman," (I.ii.316) though in that soliloquy he also rails against the world as a whole: "How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable/ Seemes to me all the uses of this world?" (I.ii.303-304) and we do not accuse Shakespeare of world hating. This same character, later in the play, marks that his grief for Ophelia's death could "Conjure the wandring Starres, and [make] them stand/Like wonder-wounded hearers" (V.i.2480-2481), and then offers to be buried with her. The man knows what it means to love a woman.

If he wished to impell a man to marry a powerful Lord’s granddaughter, why choose to bait him with perils of chasitity? Why not persuade the youth on the advantages of love? No one could write about love like Shakespeare. Why not beat him over the head with:

Portia:

"How all other passions fleet to ayre,

As doubtfull thoughts, and rash imbrac'd despaire:

And shuddering feare, and greene-eyed jealousie.

O love be moderate, allay thy extasie,

In measure raine thy joy, scant this excesse,

I feele too much thy blessing make it lesse." - (The Merchant of Venice III.ii. 228-233).

or Antony:

"Heere is my space:

Kingdomes are clay: Our dungie earth alike

Feeeds Beats as man; the Nobleness of life

Is to do thus: when such a mutuall paire,

And such a twaine can doo't, in which I binde

On paine of punishment, the world to weete

We stand up Peerelesse." (Antony and Cleopatra I.i.39-45)

Othello:

"It gives me wonder great, as my content

To see you heere before me.

Oh my Soules Joy:

If after every Tempest, come such Calmes,

May the windes blow, till they have waken'd death:

And let the labouring Barke climbe hills of Seas

Olympus high: and duck againe as low,

As hell's from Heaven. If it were now to dye,

'Twere now to be most happy. For I feare,

My Soule hath her consent so absolute,

That not another comfort like to this,

Succeeds in unknowne Fate." (Othello II.i.205-214)

or Romeo:

"With loves light wings

Did I ore-perch these walls,

For stony limits cannot hold Love out,

And what Love can do, that dares Love attempt" (Romeo and Juliet II.i.829-833)

Why choose to bait him with his own beauty, and encourage him incessantly simply to reproduce, reducing the woman's part in it to an "uneared womb" when he had oaths of love at his fingertips? He did not want the young Earl to marry. The sonnets encourage the subject away from marriage. That a specific subject exists, I do not deny. That it is Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton, is very probable. That the first seventeen sonnets were commissioned as a means of changing the young earl's mind toward marriage, I vehemently deny the possibility. They are more likely a series of satires on his friend's situation. Each day he might have met the earl and showed him his newest installment, comforting the man who had made a hard decision and was paying for it.