Sonnet 1

1

From fairest creatures we desire increase,

That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,

But as the riper should by time decease

His tender heir might bear his memory:

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,

Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,

Making a famine where abundance lies,

Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament,

And only herald to the gaudy spring,

Within thine own bud buriest thy content,

And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding.

Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

General
As a first sonnet this is an extraordinary start compared to other sonnet sequences of the time – this is no introduction to a love sequence, where is the unrequited love? Where is the unreasonable but beautiful mistress?

Coleridge: ‘Shakespeare goes on creating, and evolving B out of A, C out of B, and so on, just as a serpent moves, which makes a fulcrum of its own body, and seems forever twisting and untwisting its own strength’ (quoted in JK, p.167). Vendler elaborates further: ‘In short, we may say this sonnet makes an aesthetic investment in profusion.’

Sense
First quatrain
From the most beautiful living things we desire procreation, so that beauty’s ‘rose’ – i.e. the prime of beauty will never die. Much play has been made of its italicisation in Q, possibly indicating a wider reference being made and links have been made between the rose and Wriothesley, whose name may have been pronounced ‘Rose-ly’. Similarly, KDJ has linked the reference to the Tudor rose – an indication that QE1 should marry, but this seems to me unlikely in the context of this particular sonnet. More importantly it is part of the courtly love tradition – so an extraordinary word to use in a sonnet and indeed a sequence that takes that tradition and turns it on its head. As CB suggests: ‘The metaphor ‘beauty’s rose’ [the fragile vehicle of beauty] was probably enough to make compositor A reach for his italics.’ So – starts with a generalizing reflection (HV).

Instead, while the older roses mature and die, their gentle offspring will (a) carry their memory (b) bear their resemblance. HV makes the point that ‘decease’ is unexpected after ‘increase’ when ‘decrease’ might have been expected. There is a possible play on words: ‘mulier’ woman from ‘mollis aer’ meaning ‘soft air’. The pun makes the generations mingle: a wife bears a son at the some time as heir reproduces his father’s manner (CB). There is also a heraldic metaphor here – bear as in heraldic arms.

SB: ‘This quatrain, designed to recommend and advertise the potency of the idea that mortals are immortal in the generation, is strengthened by including and overwhelming the fact it attempts to combat the beauty of each beautiful creature is mortal, each must by time decease’.

Second quatrain
But you, betrothed/ but also ‘shrunken’ to your own bright eyes, burn up the substance of your life – cf Ovid’s Narcissus. i.e. the youth loses the chance to increase and instead has contracted or shrunk into himself – making loss where abundance lies. Cf. Ovid – Narcissus’ cry ‘inopen me copia fecit’ [‘my very abundance of contact with what I love makes me poor’] see Golding’s translation 3.463ff. It is in all an image of impotence – a desire that can go nowhere. Also cf. V&A ll.19-20.

Third quatrain
The speaker opens a third argument – this then is not a volta but a different structure – but is it as simple as 3 quatrains, each with a variation on the same argument with a couplet at the end?
You who are the world’s vigorous and youthful ornament, and chief forerunner of the spring in all its joyful show – you bury your bud/seed in your happiness/ that which you contain/ the children who are hidden within you (CB). Note use of ‘buriest’ – links to ‘grave’ in last line and marks a definite shift in the tone of the sonnet. The importance of now – this is a stress in the poem – as WS tries to capture the fleeting moment of the present. And, gentle miser, you are wasteful in acting in such a mean/selfish way. The young man is a wastrel because he hoards himself up.

Couplet
The speaker implores the youth to take pity on the world, or else he will be this sort of glutton: he will consume what he owes to the world i.e. his children – these are destroyed once by his self-absorption and once by his death. So, the sonnet ends with a gloomy prophecy.

Structure
This is not as straightforward as one might have thought – HV argues instead that the ‘reproachful narrative of the actuality (5-12) straddles the octave and sestet’ showing WS’ ‘inventiveness with respect to the continental sonnet structure……I think it is no accident that the first sonnet in his sequence avoids the two structures a reader might expect – the binary structure of the Italian sonnet, and the quatrains-in parallel of the English sonnet.’ She sees the first quatrain as organic, the second as inorganic, the third as reproach and the couplet as prophecy. This is a useful analysis of the structure of this seemingly straightforward but actually incredibly complex sonnet!

The Speaker
This is our first encounter with the speaker – what can we learn about him from this sonnet? The first point of note is that he is prepared to use all sorts of rhetorical devices to persuade the young man to produce an heir. He is then showing off his prowess in sonneteering – a glance at the ideas contained in Fletcher's preface to Licia (see Blog Post : Introduction.)

Links with other sonnets
HV thinks as there are so may concepts here that link to other sonnets that this may have been composed later as a ‘preface’. It is, she says, an index to the others covering: beauty, increase, inheritance, memory, light, abundance, sweetness, freshness, ornament, springtime, tenderness, and the world’s rights. This is an interesting thought, yet the relationship between all the sonnets is a complex one and I am constantly constructing an imaginary 3D matrix in which to link them all to each other - like a giant prism!

Links with other WS works
2. A&C 3.13.19-20: ‘Tell him that he wears the rose / Of youth upon him.’
4. Cymb. 5.6.448-54 & Luc l.1240 – Cymb also published 1609 – some say this could be a sign that this group of sonnets is later than has been supposed.
6. cf. V&A l.19-20.
12. cf. Rosaline in R&J who according to Romeo, has sworn to live unmarried and ‘in that sparing makes huge waste. / For beauty starved with her severity, / Cuts beauty off from all posterity.’ (1.1.218-20)
14. V&A ll.757-60

Links with other authors/sources
Erasmus’ ‘Epistle to persuade a young gentleman to marriage’ which appeared in Thomas Wilson’s The Arte of Rhetorique (1553) – Wilson was hugely influential book that WS is likely to have known. (Source: Katherine M Wilson in SB)
6. Ovid – Narcissus’ cry ‘inopen me copia fecit’ [‘my very abundance of contact with what I love makes me poor’] see Golding 3.463ff. It is in all an image of impotence – a desire that can go nowhere.
12. Isaiah 32:5:’Then shall the niggard be no more called gentle, nor the churl liberal’ (Coverdale’s trans.)