Sonnet 3: “Thy mother’s glass”

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 un-ear’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 shalt see,

Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.

     But if thou live rememb’red not to be,

     Die single and thine Image dies with thee.

“…After the lilting beginning, I get a hectoring sense as the sonnet progresses, heightened by the repeated rhymes that run through the last two quatrains into the couplet: husbandry/posterity, thee/see, be/thee. (It was considered bad form to repeat rhymes in a sonnet, but Shakespeare didn’t always pay attention to rules if they didn’t serve his purposes.) Especially after this hectoring, the tone of the couplet sounds severe—the repeated die with its harsh “d” sound, like a double dare. There’s a definite contrast to the preceding sonnets….

“Have we learned anything new about our characters? Y.M. seems implacable to me. W. sounds interested, but not directly involved in Y.M.’s affairs. Is he a concerned friend or relative? Or are his arguments on behalf of another? Has he been asked to intercede? A go-between? It feels like we’re missing something. We need to know more.”

—Shakespeare’s Sonnets Among His Private Friends, p.22-23 (publication date 10/1/21)