Sonnet 3

3

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest

Now is the time that face should form another,

Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest

Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.

For where is she so fair whose uneared womb

Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?

Or who is he so fond will be the tomb

Of his self-love, to stop posterity?

Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee

Calls back the lovely April of her prime:

So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,

Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.

But if thou live remembered not to be,

Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

General
Interesting its form and structure, Sonnet 3 has no couplet tie and is also notable since the sonnet does not ‘turn’ until the couplet: ‘the body of the poem would seem devoted to life, the couplet to death.’ (HV) In addition the second quatrain is in the form of two questions.

Sense
First quatrain
The speaker implores the young man to look in his mirror and tell the face that he sees there that it is time to create another, identical face i.e. have a child. If he doesn’t then he will cheat the world and deny some mother future happiness/bliss.

1. glass: mirror – often used as a form of admonition (CB) eg as in Whetstone’s Mirror for Magistrates (1559) or as an emblem of vanity (cf Luc ll.1758-64)
3. whose: i.e the new face that should be formed
fresh repair: (a) appearance of newness (b) recently renovated state (CB) - untarnished by time (GBE)
4. beguile: trick; cheat (charmingly); disappoint
unbless: deprive of happiness. 1st cited usage in OED

The first quatrain links back to Sonnet 1.9: 'Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament' with its insistence on the present – time permeates this sequence and the speaker wishes to stress the urgency of preserving the young man's beauty through the next generation. Thus 'Now is the time' in line 2. Note the use also of synecdoche [where the naming of a part represents the whole] in the word 'face' (1,2) – in Sonnet 2 'brow' (2.1) acts in the same way.

Second quatrain
For where is the virgin so beautiful that she would deny the young man’s advances? Or who is he that is so foolish as to be the grave of his own beauty through his narcissism – to cut off the family line?

5. uneared: untilled, unploughed - cf. A&C 2.2.233-34 and Wilson p. 122 (1926 ed)
6. husbandry: agricultural management – cf. MM 1.4.43-4
7. fond: foolish
8.stop posterity: cut off the family line/ the emergence of future generations – cf V&A ll.757-60

Note use of agricultural metaphor, picking up on refs to 'field' and 'weed' in Sonnet 2. These two questions are central to the speaker's argument in the first 17 sonnets – that the young man is failing in his duty to procreate and that he is too tied up in his own self-love – both will mean an end to his beauty as it will die with him and so cheat the world.

'Womb' and 'tomb' are interestingly juxtaposed here, I think quite arrestingly. This is similar to the surprise of the 'increase/decease' rhyme in Sonnet 1, as noted by HV. WS makes the womb/tomb rhyme again in R&J 2.3.5-6.

Third quatrain
The speaker tells the young man that he is the reflection of his mother, and that she can look at his youthfulness and see/recall her own springtime. In the same way the youth will grow old and look back at this time as his ‘golden time.’

9. Again ref to Luc as per l.1. Also cf Erasmus as quoted in CB – see below.
April: proverbially fresh
prime: height of perfection, springtime of life
11. windows of thine age: metaphorically aged eyes cf. 1Cor, 13:12 It is a chance to get perspective – cf Sonnet 24: 'Mine eye hath played the painter...'
12. cf Aristotle below for the unexpected physical explanation!

Couplet
But if he does not want to be remembered then he should die unmarried so that his image dies with him.
13. remember’d not to be: (a) in such a way that you will not be remembered (b) with the intent of being forgotten (SB)
14.image: (a) physical appearance (as reflected in a mirror) (b) embodiment (such as a child) (CB) (c) idea – cf: Donne below

There is a definite tone of frustration and admonition in the speaker's voice, emphasized by the use of 'die' twice, stressing the urgency and finality of the young man's position. At this stage there is no talk of poetry saving the subject's beauty for posterity – it is all up to the young man to take the action.

Links with other works by WS
1.Luc ll.1758-64: time ref
5-8. R&J 2.3.5-6: 'The earth that's nature's mother is her tomb: / What is her burying grave, that is her womb.'
5. A&C 2.2.233-34: ‘She made great Caesar lay his sword to bed. / He ploughed her, and she cropped.’
MM 1.4.43-4: ‘even so her plenteous womb / Expresseth his full tilth and husbandry’
8. V&A: ll.757-60: ‘What is thy body but a swallowing grave, / Seeming to bury that posterity / Which by rights of time thou needs must have.’ This is repeating the x-ref and idea inherent in Sonnet 1 ll.13-14

Links with works by other authors
5.Thomas Wilson p. 122 (1926 ed): ‘what punishment is he worthy to suffer, that refuseth to Plough that land, which being tilled, yieldeth children.’
9. Erasmus: 'Old age cometh upon us all, will we or nill we, and this way nature provided for us, that we should wax young again in our children...For what man can be grieved that he is old when he seeth his won countenance, which he had being a child, to appear lively in his son?' (CB, taken from Wilson)
11. 1Cor, 13:12 : ‘For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face’
12. Aristotle De generatione 780a, 31-3: the reason why old people do not have keen vision is that the skin in the eyes, like that elsewhere, gets wrinkled and thicker with age.’ (Burr)
14. Donne: Image and Dream 1: ‘Image of her whom I love, more then she.’