Sonnet 13

13

O that you were yourself! But, love, you are

No longer yours, than you yourself here live;

Against this coming end you should prepare,

And your sweet semblance to some other give:

So should that beauty which you hold in lease

Find no determination; then you were

Yourself again after yourself’s decease,

When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.

Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,

Which husbandry in honour might uphold

Against the stormy gusts of winter’s day

And barren rage of death’s eternal cold?

O none but unthrifts, dear my love you know:

You had a father, let your son say so.

General
There is a debate about the use of you over thou here – it is the first sonnet in the sequence to do so. SB argues that this is a move towards intimacy, but there is much confusion about this and WS appears to use the terms interchangeably in the sonnets, except for the Dark Lady sequence where (except 145 which is unique for other reasons) he only uses thou. GBE concludes: ‘it seems to me very doubtful that, in general, such variations should be taken as signalling significant changes in attitude or tone’. My view is that the more of WS' sonnets I read the more I understand that this is not a sequence in the way that other sonnet sequences are organised, but more as a collection of poems, possibly in different voices, to different subjects. Such issues only become significant if the reader is intent on imposing a narrative on the group as a whole.

HV concentrates more on the tone of the poem, noting that this is the first ‘momentous instant in which the speaker first uses evocatives of love: he addresses the young man as love and dear my love. The sonnet is Italianate: the octave argues for the preservation of the individual self, the sestet for preservation of family lineage.

It is also the first of the many ‘reply-sonnets', in which it appears that the speaker (s) is answering a point put to him by the beloved(s).

Sense

First quatrain
Oh, that you were in good health/ that your identity was fixed. But, my love, you are only in possession of yourself for as long as you remain alive. You should prepare yourself in anticipation of death, and replicate a likeness of yourself in someone else.
1-4:  GBE provides a useful paraphrase: ‘O if only the whole you were composed of soul (‘self’) and hence immortal (there would be no cause for concern), but ‘you’ are a combination of soul and body and, as such, your bodily part is mortal and subject to death (‘this coming end’)’.
1. JK: ‘The first yourself is an imagined absolute, beyond chance and Time, the latter quotidian, subject to the decay described by Sonnet 12’.
2. here: in the world, with poss play on ‘heir’.
4. semblance: image, copy (with implication that this image would perpetuate both parts, spiritual and physical, of ‘you’)

Second quatrain
In that case that beauty which you hold by lease, i.e. only temporarily, would find no end/conclusion/termination. Then yourself would survive beyond your death, when your sweet offspring should bear your sweet – essential – form.
5. beauty: both inner and outer (GBE)
6. determination: in legal language, an estate held in lease determines at the end of a fixed term; one held for life determines at the death of the holder (SB).
7. again: SB sees a possible pun on 'a gain' – and that WS ‘is pressing the idea of investment for every dram of wit it will yield…this sonnet is cast in terms of profitable property management.’
8. sweet form: precious image – GBE: ‘with perhaps some reference to the Scholastic concept of something which contains the ‘essential determinant principle’. GBE comments on ‘the frequent and rather tiresome repetition’ in the sonnets of sweet - may be a legacy of Petrarch’s ‘dolce’, ‘dolcemente’, ‘dolcezza’ and other related forms. However, I feel that the word itself has suffered from recent bad press and is about purity and essence instead of cuteness; as such the repetition is to be marked but not resisted.


Third quatrain
Who lets such a beautiful body/family line go to waste, which good management might support in an honourable state/perpetuate through ‘an honourable estate’ of matrimony, in anticipation of the bad effects of old age (‘winter’) and the barrenness of death.
9. lets: allows, with quibble on lease
10. house: cf. roof in 10 – both his body and his lineage
12. barren rage: WS often uses rage where he means lust/desire/passion
cf. Lucrece ll. 464-69:
His hand that yet remains upon her breast,
Rude ram, to batter such an ivory wall! -
May feel her heart, poor citizen! Distress'd,
Wounding itself to death, rise up and fall, -
Beating her bulk, that his hand shakes withal:
This moves in him more rage and lesser pity,
To make the breach and enter this sweet city.

SB considers that in this sonnet barren is used as an adjective signifying effect and cause – so it is a barren-making passion.

Couplet
O none but prodigals/spendthrifts do that – you had a father, create a son that will say the same.
13-14: Q’s punctuation is ambiguous here. The intimacy of 'dear my love you know', confirms the intimate use of you is intended in the sonnet (JK).

Links with other works by WS
12. Lucrece, ll.463 - 469