Sonnet 3 by William Shakespeare

[kellyrfineman]

Today, one of the early poems to the Fair Youth sequence. Throughout the first seventeen sonnets, Shakespeare is urging the Fair Youth to find a woman and have children. This particular poem uses a farming metaphor that results in (among other things) a rather bawdy sexual reference involving ploughing and a rather clever double meaning of the word

Comments

[p_sunshine]

This sonnet still gives me the willies. But I appreciated your discussion.

[kellyrfineman]

Thanks. I think.

[p_sunshine]

:) Let me rephrase - I liked reading the discussion even though that particular sonnet gives me the creeps.

[kellyrfineman]

I thought that might be what you meant. Is it the idea of one man urging another to breed that's creepy, or something else? (Enquiring minds want to know!)

[p_sunshine]

More the idea that it doesn't matter what woman he chooses to mate with - she's not any more important than farming soil or livestock. Less important even - she's just a vessel to be filled.
And if this guy is conceited enough to be wooed into having a child specifically so that he can have a younger mirror of himself, then maybe he just isn't at the point where he should be having a child yet.