Here is William Shakespeare’s 1st of 154 Sonnets.
For maximum comprehension, you’re encouraged to read this sonnet aloud several times and discuss it in the comments section below.
If you need help with understanding the words used in this Shakesperean sonnet, use our online English dictionary: http://englishdictionary.dictionaryfriends.com as well as our online translator: http://onlinetranslator2.translationfriends.com .
The following text is a duplicate from William Shakespeare’s Sonnets, page 43-44. You can read this text online as well as access additional online resources and links here: http://www.docusharing.com/docs/3/shakespeare-sonnets.html
You can do further research on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 1 by using our educational online search engine: http://searchengine.sersea.com/sonnet_1.html
Sonnet 1
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’st flame with self-substantial
fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.
–William Shakespeare
After reading William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 1 several times on your own, you’re invited to watch and read Sonnet 1 along with this video to increase comprehension as well as English pronunciation.
Shakespeare’s 1st sonnet, one of his most well-known, is the first of his procreation sonnets, which urge the young
man he is writing to not to waste his beauty by not fathering a child. The intended recipient of this and other sonnets
is a subject of scholarly debate, with many believing it to be Henry Wriothesley. See: Identity of “Mr. W.H.”
Synopsis
This sonnet starts with the line “From fairest creatures we desire increase” meaning that creatures multiply in order
to preserve their beauty. Shakespeare is commenting that creatures age “as the riper should by time decease”
therefore by procreating the next generation will preserve a creature’s beauty “His tender heir might bear his
memory”.
The person in this sonnet is described as being too self-absorbed to procreate. Therefore although he is beautiful
now, this beauty will eventually fade “the world’s fresh ornament / And only herald to the gaudy spring”
Sonnet 1 introduces the themes of the first group of sonnets; it explores themes of Beauty, Passage of human life,
and wasteful self-consumption.
Sonnet 1 starts a group of the first seventeen sonnets, often referred to as the procreation sonnets because they are
about producing offspring.
The structure of Sonnet 1 is simple. The first quatrain describes that Beauty should propagate. The second quatrain
argues that the male in the poem has failed to do this. The third quatrain argues that he should do this otherwise his
beauty will whither away, with the final couplet portending doom should he fail.
The image of the young man contracted to his own bright eyes, feeding his “light’s flame” is an image of
self-absorption.
Now, let the world know what you believe Shakespeare’s Sonnet 1 is all about by adding a comment below.
