Sonnet 3

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Sonnet 3 in the 1609 Quarto
Q1 Q2 Q3 C 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 unear’d 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 shall see, Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time. But if thou live, remember’d not to be, Die single, and thine image dies with thee. 4 8 12 14 —William Shakespeare

Q1



Q2



Q3



C

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 unear’d 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 shall see,
Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.
But if thou live, remember’d not to be,
Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

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8



12

14

Sonnet 3 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a procreation sonnet within the Fair Youth sequence.

In the sonnet, the speaker is urging the man to whom he is writing to not waste his beauty by not having children. The intended recipient of this and other sonnets is a subject of scholarly debate, with some believing it to be William Herbert and others Henry Wriothesley, as well as other candidates.

The poem is typical of a Shakespearean sonnet in its form: fourteen decasyllabic lines, consisting of three quatrains and a concluding rhyming couplet.

Sonnet 3 is a typical Shakespearean or English sonnet. Shakespearean sonnets consist of three quatrains followed by a couplet, all in iambic pentameter and following the form's rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg. Each line of the first quatrain of Sonnet 3 exhibits a final extrametrical syllable or feminine ending. The first line additionally exhibits an initial reversal: