SONNETS. I. FROM fairest creatures we desire increase*, Within thine own bud buriest thy content, 3 From fairest creatures we desire increase, &c.] See Venus and Adonis : 66 Upon the earth's increase why should'st thou feed, "Unless the earth with thy increase be fed, 66 By lay of nature thou art bound to breed, "That thine may live when thou thyself art dead; "In that thy likeness still is left alive." BOSWELL. If the first nineteen Sonnets be attentively examined, they will be found only to expand the argument of that stanza. I have been tempted frequently to consider those, and many more of the collection, as parts of a design to treat the subject of Adonis in the sonnet form; relinquished by the poet for the present more manageable stanza. BOADEN. 4 And, tender churl, MAK'ST WASTE in NIGGARDING.] So, in Romeo and Juliet: "Then she hath sworn that she will still live chaste? “Rom. She hath: and in that sparing makes huge waste." C. Pity the world, or else this glutton be, To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee3. When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, 5 this glutton be, To eat the world's due, BY THE grave and thee.] The ancient editors of Shakspeare's works, deserve at least the praise of impartiality. If they have occasionally corrupted his noblest sentiments, they have likewise depraved his most miserable conceits; as, perhaps, in this instance. I read (piteous constraint, to read such stuff at all!) 66 this glutton be; "To eat the world's due, be thy grave and thee." i. e. be at once thyself, and thy grave. The letters that form the two words were probably transposed. I did not think the late Mr. Rich had such example for the contrivance of making Harlequin jump down his own throat. STEEVENS. I do not believe there is any corruption in the text. Mankind being daily thinned by the grave, the world could not subsist if the places of those who are taken off by death were not filled up by the birth of children. Hence Shakspeare considers the propagation of the species as the world's due, as a right to which it is entitled, and which it may demand from every individual. The sentiment in the lines before us, it must be owned, is quaintly expressed; but the obscurity arises chiefly, I think, from the aukward collocation of the words for the sake of the rhyme. The meaning seems to me to be this.- Pity the world, which is daily depopulated by the grave, and beget children, in order to supply the loss; or, if you do not fulfil this duty, acknowledge, that as a glutton swallows and consumes more than is sufficient for his own support, so you (who by the course of nature must die, and by your own remissness are likely to die childless) thus "living and dying in single blessedness," consume and destroy the world's due; to the desolation of which you will doubly contribute; 1. by thy death; 2. by thy dying childless.' Our author's plays, as well as the poems now before us, affording a sufficient number of conceits, it is rather hard that he should be answerable for such as can only be obtained through the medium of alteration; that he should be ridiculed not only for what he has, but for what he has not written. MALONE. Thy youth's proud livery, so gaz'd on now, 99 This were to be new made, when thou art old, And see thy blood warm, when thou feel'st it cold. III. Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest, Or who is he so fond, will be the tomb 8 6 - a tatter'd WEED,-] A torn garment. MALOne. 7 - whose UN-EAR'D WOMB DISDAINS THE tillage OF THY husbandry?] Thus, in Measure for Measure : "Expresseth his full tilth and husbandry." STEevens. Un-ear'd is unploughed. See p. 7, n. 1. MALONE. 8 Or who is he so FOND, will be the tomb Of his self-love, TO STOP POSTERITY?] So, in Romeo and Juliet: 66 beauty, starv'd with her severity, "Cuts beauty off from all posterity." Again, in Venus and Adonis : "What is thy body but a swallowing grave, Seeming to bury that posterity "Which by the rights of time thou needs must have, "If thou destroy them not in their obscurity?" Fond, in old language, is foolish. MALONE. Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee IV. Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend; Thou art thy mother's GLASS, &c.] So, in The Rape of Lucrece: "Poor broken glass, I often did behold "In thy sweet semblance my old age new-born." MALONE. 1 Calls back the lovely APRIL of her prime:] So, in Timon of Athens: "She whom the spital house and ulcerous sores 2 So thou through WINDOWS of thine AGE shalt see, Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.] Thus, in our author's Lover's Complaint: "Time had not scythed all that youth begun, "Nor youth all quit; but, spite of heaven's fell rage, MALONE. 3 NATURE'S bequest gives nothing, but doth lend; And being frank, she lends to those are free, &c.] So, Milton, in his Masque at Ludlow Castle: "Why should you be so cruel to yourself, "And to those dainty limbs which nature lent "For gentle usage, and soft delicacy? "But you invert the covenants of her trust, "And harshly deal, like an ill borrower, "With that which you receiv'd on other terms." STEEVENS. Profitless usurer, why dost thou use So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live? Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive. Thy unus'd beauty must be tomb'd with thee, V. 7 Those hours, that with gentle work did frame 8 4 What acceptable AUDIT canst thou leave ?] So, in Macbeth : "To make their audit at your highness' pleasure." STEEVENS. 5 Those HOURS, &c.] Hours is almost always used by Shakspeare as a dissyllable. MALOne. 6 And that UNFAIR, which fairly doth excell;] And render that which was once beautiful, no longer fair. To unfair, is, I believe, a verb of our author's coinage. MALONE. 7 For never-resting TIME LEADS SUMMER ON-] So, in All's Well That Ends Well: "For, with a word, the time will bring on summer." STEEVENS. 8 Beauty o'er-snow'd, and BARENESS every where :] Thus the quarto, 1609. The modern editions have 66 barrenness every where." In the 97th Sonnet we meet again with the same image: MALONE. |