W.

Shakespeare Sonnets
Sonnet 53

1. What is your substance, whereof are you made,
substance = essence, constituents, basic form. It corresponds in Neo-Platonic doctrine to
the ideal or underlying form of things, from which individual instantiations arise in our
world of sense data.
whereof = of what.
2. That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
strange = unknown, unconnected to you, unusual.
shadows - in the Platonic sense of unreal things that derive their existence from forms
and substances. Also in the conventional sense of shadows cast by objects. strange
shadows could also be ghosts or spirits.
tend - attend, as a servant attends a master, or a shepherd tends a flock.
3. Since every one hath, every one, one shade,
every one - everything, each substance, each separate entity. The antecedent cannot be
shadows, because it is too awkward to talk of shadows having their own individual shade.
The reference is therefore most probably to substance in line 1, or to things in general.
Each perfect Platonic form has its own shadowy image in the world of men. However this
does not make sense in terms of Platonism, because every ideal form can have any
number of 'shades' derived from it. Thus the form of 'beauty' would transmit part of itself
into the manifold instantiations of actual beauty in the world. Likewise for the form of
'roundness' or 'sphericity'. It is not true to say that 'sphericity' has only one 'shade' or
example of itself in the physical world. The poet is perhaps hovering between the
Platonic meanings and the idea that everyone only casts one shadow, or that everyone
only has one spirit.
4. And you but one, can every shadow lend.
but one = being but one, being the unique essence of all.
can every shadow lend = can give form and existence to everything that is, can give a part
of yourself, as a copy of the ideal. Again a somewhat difficult and quasi-philosophical
idea which is based on Neo-Platonism. Beauty and goodness for example were ideas,
forms, or ideals, which lent part of their substance to individual existences which
possessed those qualities.
5. Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit
Describe Adonis - If one were to describe Adonis. The suggestion has greater immediacy
because Shakespeare had in fact done just that, in his poem Venus and Adonis, which
was dedicated to the Earl of Southampton.
the counterfeit = the copy, the description, the painted version.
6. Is poorly imitated after you;
Is but a poor imitation of you.
7. On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set,
(If you were to) paint or describe Helen's face, using all the artifice at your command.
Helen was the wife of Menelaus. She abandoned him and fled with Paris to Troy, thereby
giving a motive for the start of the Trojan war. She was supposed to be the most beautiful
woman in the world at the time, and in all recorded history. The story is mostly mythical
and is linked in with the tale of the judgement of Paris. In return for selecting Aphrodite
as the most beautiful of the three goddesses, (Athena and Hera being the other two), Paris
was rewarded by having the world's most beautiful woman as his bedfellow (although she
was already married). The subsequent enmity between the three Olympian goddesses
helped to stoke the fires of vengeance in the Trojan war cycle.
8. And you in Grecian tires are painted new:
tires = attires, dress. The use of painted here and art in the line above perhaps suggest that
some of the beauty was artificial.
9. Speak of the spring, and foison of the year,
foison = harvest, plenty, abundance.
10. The one doth shadow of your beauty show,
shadow - as above, lines 2 & 4. The Neo-Platonic doctrine is reasserted. The Spring is but
the shadow (shade, instantiation) of your beauty.
11. The other as your bounty doth appear;
The foison of the year models its abundance on you.
12. And you in every blessed shape we know.
You are the universal perfection on which all subsequent copies are based.
blessd shape - anything with qualities which we are inclined to praise; anything on
which beauties of character appear to have been conferred. blessd did not have the
additional meaning it now has of a mild expletive, as in 'What the blessed point is there in
writing all this?'
13. In all external grace you have some part,
The contrast is drawn between external grace, such as physical beauty, and unseen,
internal perfection, in this case a constant heart.
14. But you like none, none you, for constant heart.
constant heart - apart from the obvious meaning of a true and loyal heart, it could refer to
an unchanging substance or essence, re-inforcing the idea that the beloved was the basic
form or ideal which infused itself into all other ephemeral forms of beauty in the sensate
world. It is however slightly perturbing that the youth who has strayed and treated the
poet badly, even to the extent of stealing his mistress, should here be endowed with a
quality which he does not seem to possess. The attribute of grace, which often is applied
to a beloved, is also that of the 'onlie-begotten' of the gospels, and one suspects here a
hidden religious meaning, since constancy and unchangeability were also attributes of the
divine.










Sonnet 3

1. Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest
glass = mirror; glass in the Sonnets usually means mirror.
the face thou viewest = your reflection. I.e. speak to yourself and tell yourself that 'Now
is the time etc'.
2. Now is the time that face should form another;
I.e. by having a child.
3. Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
If you do not undertake now the repair and renewal of your face, since it is fast decaying.
whose refers back to the face thou viewest.
4. Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
beguile = cheat; deprive of its due rights.
unbless = make unhappy, deprive of fruitfulness, and the pleasure of being married to
you.
some mother = some woman whom you might marry and cause to be a mother.
5. For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
For where is she so fair = what woman is so beautiful that; where is the woman in the
world that (would be too proud to sleep with you).
uneared = unploughed. To ear is the old term for 'to plough', and often it is used
meatphorically.
uneared womb - The reference here is to sexual intercourse. Ploughing the womb, (as the
plough enters into the soil so does the man enter into the woman), and sowing it with
seed (semen) leads to children, as ploughing and sowing the land leads to crops.
According to the physiology of the time, the male seed was the substance which created a
child, and the woman was simply a carrier of the developing embryo. The biological
details of reproduction were not understood.
6. Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Disdains = is contemptuous of.
tillage of thy husbandry The farming and ploughing metaphor continues. Tillage is
cultivation, working of the land; husbandry is farm and estate management, with a pun on
'being a husband'.
7. Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
fond = foolish
7-8 the tomb of his self-love in this context self-love leads to death, since there is no issue
(i.e no children).
to stop posterity = to ensure that there are no descendants, to bring an end to future
generations. The sentence has an additional sexual meaning, relating to masturbation.
Onan was the biblical figure who was destroyed by God for spilling the seed 'that he
might not have children'.
8. Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
See above.
9. Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee
Thou art thy mother's glass = you are effectively a mirror in which your mother can look
to see a reflection of herself as she was in her youth.
10. Calls back the lovely April of her prime;
Calls back = recalls, remembers, brings back to mind.
the lovely April of her prime = her springtime, when she was most beautiful. April was
the beginning of Spring, and was thought to be the most colourful of the months.
11. So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
through windows of thine age - This suggests not only looking back from old age, upon
the past, as if through a window, but also looking at a child, one's own, as if seeing it
through a window. The window can be both a barrier to and a point of contact with the
world beyond.
12. Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.
Despite = in spite of.
thy golden time = the time of your golden youth, the time of your glory.
13. But if thou live, remembered not to be,
remembered not to be = determined not to be remembered, not being remembered. It ties
in with the theme that the consequence of dying childless is to be erased from the book of
memory.
14. Die single and thine image dies with thee.
If you die, as a single man, with no children, there will be no image to carry on your
memory. The line could be read as a sort of tetchy imperative - 'Die as a single person
then, if you must be so stubbornly inclined!'.