Sonnet 11

11

As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow’st

In one of thine, from that which thou departest;

And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow’st

Thou mayst call thine, when thou from youth convertest;

Herein loves wisdom, beauty and increase:

Without this, folly, age and cold decay.

If all were minded so, the times should cease,

And threescore year would make the world away:

Let those whom nature hath not made for store,

Harsh, featureless and rude, barrenly perish;

Look whom she best endowed, she gave the more,

Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:

She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby

Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.

General
One of the most striking features of this sonnet is the shift in metaphor from organic, recalling the early horticultural sonnets, to inorganic – as the speaker now raises the subject of 'print' and 'copy'. HV talks about this extensively,looking at the pattern of waning-and-growing in the sonnet which ends with ‘a “better” metaphor which will not require the disagreeable waning of the beloved – the inorganic metaphor of the seal that prints successive copies.’ In the last 4 lines the sonnet starts to print copies of its own words: gave, gift; bounteous, beauty; more, more; shouldst, shouldst; carved, copy; meant, print – the process of ‘copying is enacted before the reader’s eyes.

Note also the use of feminine rhyme, as in Sonnet 8: this is where the the final syllable of a line is unstressed – and so these lines ‘convey something of a dying fall', and are often used by WS to illustrate vulnerability and/or heightened emotions.

Sense
First quatrain
The speaker tells the youth that just as fast as he decays he will also grow in his child, born from that which has left him (blood/seed). And that fresh/youthful blood, which he gave when young, he may call his own, when he is no longer young.
1. fast: quickly and steadily; speedily

2.in one of thine: in the person of your child; in the womb of your wife (SB)
departest: give up/surrender, in the sense of semen. (Each orgasm was believed to shorten a man's life!)

3. blood: life

4. convertest: turn aside; left behind. This is pronounced 'convartest', to rhyme with 'departest'. The best recording I have of that is by David Tennant whose Scottish accent perfectly fits the delivery (see Audio List)

Second quatrain
The speaker tells the youth that in this course lies wisdom, beauty and increase, but if he deviates then instead folly, age and cold decay will accrue. If everyone thought the way he does then generations would stop and the sixty years would see the end of the world.
5. Herein: in my advice; in marriage and procreation; in the child itself

7.times: generations

Thomas Wilson, The Art of Rhetoric (1553): 'Let it [marriage] be forbidden...and within few years, all mankind must needs decay forever...Take away marriage, and how many shall remain after a hundred years.'

Third quatrain
Let those whom nature has made worthy of preserving – those that are harsh, featureless and ugly, die without issue. Whomever she well endowed with qualities, she gives more to, which generous gift you should nourish/foster by putting it to use.
9. for store: as a source of increase; as breeding stock (livestock kept for breeding were called ‘store beasts’ [SB]). Store may also be a reference to 'hoarded wealth', looking back to e.g. Sonnet 2.

10. featureless: without marks of distinction, shapeless, ugly
rude: crude, rough, bare

11.Like God in the parable of the talents, Nature gave more to those who already had most –see Matt 25.29:‘For unto everyone that hath shall be given and he shall have abundance; But he hath not, from him shall be taken away, even that which he hath.’ (JK)

12.in bounty cherish: foster (take care of) by being bountiful (i.e. prolific); cherish also meant 'guard carefully'; thus this phrase embodies the paradox of several previous sonnets, that of keeping by giving, increasing by diminishing'. (SB)

Couplet
The speaker tells the youth that Nature designed him as her example of what nature can do – her stamp of authority – and in so doing meant that he should reproduce himself, and so not let the original pattern die.
13. carved: incised, in the context of seal
seal: not the wax, but the stamp which marks it. GBE: ‘The youth is pictured as Nature’s great seal by which she validated (gave authority to) her highest creations, as a monarch did in appending a seal to documents of state.'

KDJ also finds a possible echo of Song of Solomon 8.6.: ‘Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death.’

Links to works by other authors

11. Matt 25.29:

13: Song of Solomon 8.6

Sonnet 10

10

For shame deny that thou bear’st love to any,

Who for thyself art so unprovident;

Grant, if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,

But that thou none lov’st is most evident:

For thou art so possessed with murd’rous hate

That ‘gainst thyself thou stick’st not to conspire,

Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate

Which to repair should be thy chief desire:

O change thy thought, that I may change my mind;

Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?

Be as thy presence is, gracious and kind;

Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove,

Make thee another self for love of me,

That beauty still may live in thine or thee.

General
Nearly all the editors that I have access to naturally pick up on the important shift in Sonnet 10 to the use of 'I' and 'me' – depending on their own standpoint, then, is the argument as to whether the first person is WS or his 'persona'. I have probably been boring enough on this subject but will say nonetheless that, in the absence of any textual or other evidence, we cannot assume that WS is present here, any more than he is when Hamlet is contemplating suicide or having a dig at the groundlings.

This is of course different to constructing a narrative in the text itself, and there is speculation, for example by JK, that 'On the surface [it is] politely critical, banteringly censorious (as befits a sonnet rebuking a social superior), it conveys a concern commensurate with the growing devotion registered in line 13’s for love of me (with its first use of a first-person pronoun in the sequence, even if oblique).’ While I am resistant to the idea of placing too much weight on the idea of a narrative thread in the sequence there are moments like these, where a group of sonnets seem to fit together (e.g. 1-18; 36ff; 127-154) where there is a perceptible movement in the relationship between the speaker and the beloved. As HV says, WS ‘is especially concerned…to punctuate his sequence with moments of visible drama.’

Sense
First quatrain
The speaker chastises the beloved, saying he should be ashamed in denying that he loves anyone, failing to look to the future for himself. While it may be true that he is beloved by many, it is most evident that he himself loves no one.
1.for shame: out of shame; shame on you!; to avoid shame you should deny; from a sense of shame you should deny – SB: ‘all three readings occur one after the other in the sequence of reading.’ It is also worth noting that the word shame also occurs at 9.14, making if not a narrative then at least a cerebral/thematic link between the two sonnets.
bear'st: feel. KDJ makes the point that WS often associates the 'bearing' of love with shame or sin, as in Othello 5.2.240: 'Think on thy sins. They are loves I bear you.' However, she does not carry on that thought to the 'bearing' of children, or the pun that women have to bear the weight of men (e.g as the Nurse does in R&J)

2. unprovident: careless; improvident, failing to look to the future

3. cf 31.1: 'Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts.'


Second quatrain
Because the beloved is so possessed by murderous hate he does not hesitate to conspire against himself, seeking to ruin that beautiful roof which his chief desire should rather be to repair.

5. possessed with: as though invaded by a demon, self-hate

  murd’rous hate: cf 9.14

6. stick’st not: does not hesitate or scruple

7.that beauteous roof: JK: ‘The young man seeks to destroy his lovely body (conventionally the house of the soul) by refusing to increase; he therefore threatens destruction of his family, the house to which he belongs, and possibly (by implication) puts a real roof in jeopardy by leaving his property to chance and decay by neglecting to provide an heir.'

These ideas of the ruined house are found elsewhere, e.g.Marlowe's Hero and Leander: 1st Sestiad, 239ff: ‘Who builds a palace, and rams up the gate, / Shall see it ruinous and desolate: / Ah! Simple Hero, learn thyself to cherish, / Lone women like to empty houses perish.’ There is also this, from Spenser's Ruines of Rome, Sonn 7:

Ye sacred ruines, and ye tragick sights,
Which onely doo the name of Rome retaine,
Olde moniments, which of so famous sprights
The honour yet in ashes doo maintaine:
Triumphant Arcks, spyres neighbours to the skie,
That you to see doth th' heauen it selfe appall,
Alas, by little ye to nothing flie,
The peoples fable, and the spoyle of all:
And though your frames do for a time make warre
Gainst time, yet time in time shall ruinate
Your workes and names, and your last reliques marre.
My sad desires, rest therefore moderate:
For if that time make ende of things so sure,
It also will end the paine, which I endure.

Third quatrain
The speaker appeals directly to the beloved to change his way of thinking so that he can alter his opinion of him. Should hate be lodged in a more beautiful dwelling than gentle love? He asks that the youth lives up his appearance/demeanour – gracious and kind/generous, or at least prove benevolent to himself.

11.kind: JK: for Elizabethan readers this meant generosity to others of human kind and particularly towards kindred – ‘so the word incites the youth to create kin to be kind to.’

Here, then, is the all important first-person reference, which now means that the speaker is being drawn into emotional entanglement with the youth, counting his own opinion worthy of being a motive for the young man to change his ways.

Couplet
The speaker pleads/demands that the beloved create another one of him, for love of the speaker, so that beauty might always live on in both the youth and his offspring.

13. The reference to the speaker intensifies from that of his opinion counting to his love holding sway over the youth, as he tries to find a way for the the beloved to endure for his sake, rather than just for the world in general. This the first suggestion of a personal relationship between them.

Links to works by other authors
Marlowe: Hero and Leander
Spenser: Ruines of Rome (trans of Du Bellay’s Antiquitez de Rome, 1591)