It’s best, first, to read ‘Stratford, Touring, London and Titchfield Part One.
Here are the opening three poems of the seventeen poems written by William Shakespeare to celebrate the seventeen birthday of Henry Wriothesely, Third Earl of Southampton and Baron of Titchfield on 6th October, 1590
The first number attached to each sonnet shows the Sonnet’s position in the new ordering and the second number its original numbering by Shakespeare and his publisher.
2. (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:
The Elizabethans were happy for a word to be stressed in any number of ways in poetry. ‘Increase’ in this context should have the second syllable emphasised – as marked.
The seventeen year old Harry Southampton is being addressed directly in the Sonnet. He is ‘the fair creature’ and we want beautiful people to reproduce – that way they will become immortal.
The italics and capitalisation on Rose are Shakespeare’s own. He is stating that Harry is a rose. The rose symbol represents the town of Southampton – and Harry was Third Earl of Southampton.
His family name was Wriothesley. It hard started off as Writh – but as the family became more grandiose it had grown to Wriothesley.
Then when part of the family became aristocratic, different ways of pronouncing the name came into play. The lower down branches pronounced the word ‘Risley’ – and the name is signed that way by some of the family.
For the aristocrats it was ‘Ryosely’ – to sound like a rose. This is how it is recorded in the Titchfield Parish Register.
Shakespeare is saying that the ‘riper’ rose – the older one, will with time cease to be: but his softer, younger heir will remind people of the older father.
Shakespeare has a beautiful internal rhyme with ‘heir’ and ‘bear’.
‘Tender heir’ also suggests ‘tender hair’. Harry was proud of his locks of hair which hung down his shoulders.
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’s flame with self substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
‘Bright eyes’ is a literal reference to Harry’s eyes: but for Shakespeare and the Elizabethans, the vocabulary of the face could also suggest the genital area. So the ‘eyes’ could also represent the ‘testicles’.
In this sequence of seventeen poems, Shakespeare suggests time and time again that Harry is too addicted to teenage masturbation.
The ‘self-substantial fuel’ with which Harry feed his ‘light’s flame’ – his passion is the semen he ejects.
By not sharing his sexual energies with a woman, Harry is starving the world – and being cruel to himself. He is engaging too energetically in self-abuse and denying himself a son.
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 mak’st waste in niggarding:
Harry is ‘the world’s fresh ornament’ because he is so attractive and by proclaiming him the ‘only herald to the gaudy [rejoicing] spring’ Shakespeare is complimenting Harry’s ancestors who were heralds and ensigns.
‘The bud’ where Harry ‘buries’ his content’ is the tip of the penis which gives him so much pleasure when he masturbates. So, paradoxically, he is wasteful and niggardly at the same time. He wastes his semen by not sharing it with others.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.
Shakespeare asks Harry to take pity on the rest of the world by fathering a son – or he, along with his death, will be greedy and rob the world of what it is entitled to.
Remember: Lord Burghley wanted Harry to marry his grand-daughter, Elizabeth Vere and was threatening the Southampton family with an enormous £5,000 fine.
3. (2)
When forty Winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,
Thy youth’s proud livery so gaz’d on now,
Will be a tatter’d weed of small worth held:
Harry Southampton was seventeen when Shakespeare wrote these words to him. He is talking about a time when he is forty years older – 57. This was the age of Queen Elizabeth in 1590 – so it an oblique attack on her. She was hated by the Southampton family for her persecution of Catholics.
Shakespeare has stopped writing about Spring and is writing about Winter. He compares the lines that will appear on Harry’s face to the deep trenches in a field. His youthful body he compares to the bright livery a Lord and his attendants would wear – and says it will turn into an old, tattered coat [weed].
Then being askt, where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
To say within thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
By using the word ‘treasure’ Shakespeare introduces another sexual theme. Money and semen are often equated in the Sonnet sequence – and the ‘deep-sunken eyes’ has be literally eyes – but it can also suggest shrivelled testicles.
How much more praise deserv’d thy beauty’s use,
If thou couldst answer ‘This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse’,
Proving his beauty by succession thine.
Shakespeare is saying that if, in old age, when asked where all his beauty has gone, Harry could point to a son, all would be explained. He would show Harry’s true worth – and excuse his old age.
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.
It would miraculously endow Harry with another youth. Although his sexual ardour would be diminished by old age he would experience it vicariously through his son.
4. (3)
Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest,
Now is the time that face should form an other,
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou do’st beguile the world, unbless some mother.
The glass here means ‘looking glass’. Shakespeare is inviting Harry to look at his ‘face’ in the mirror. The face here can be literally his face – but it can also mean the genital area – that’s why Harry’s face has the ability to form ‘an other’. ‘Fresh repair’ means getting on with the job while Harry is still young – to make himself stay young. The consequence of not doing so is to cheat the world and take a blessing away from a woman which is rightly here’s.
Shakespeare uses ‘face’ sexually also in ‘King Lear’: ‘Behold yon simpering dame/Whose face between her forks presageth snow.’ Forks=legs.
[This reference to a looking glass is also an oblique attack on Queen Elizabeth as well. She was said to have no ‘true’ looking glasses around her as she did not want to be aware of her own aging. Her Ladies-in-Waiting were said to take advantage of this by painting her nose red.]
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?
Shakespeare compares sexual intercourse here with ploughing a field – so an ‘unear’d womb’ is one without ears of corn i.e. one that is virgin. There is no woman so beautiful who would not relish young Harry as her lover – and who would be so stupid as to be the reason his family line stops with his death.
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.
This a compliment to the beautiful Mary Countess Mary Southampton who in 1590 was still in her thirties.
Shakespeare is saying that Mary can see her younger self – ‘the lovely April of her prime’ – reflected in the mirror of her son. If Harry were to have a child, he could so the same. The ‘windows of age’ that Shakespeare refers to represent that added vision and knowledge that maturity will bring – even though it brings wrinkles as well.
But if thou live remembred not to be,
Die single and thine Image dies with thee.
But if you live wishing NOT to be remembered and die a bachelor then your beauty and how you look will die with you.
‘Die single’ also has a sexual meaning. ‘To die’ in Shakespeare – as in the metaphysical poets like John Donne – can mean ‘to experience an orgasm. So to ‘die single’ is also an image of solitary masturbation.
To read ‘The Birthday Sonnets’ Part Four, click: HERE!
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