Sonnets 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16, and 17 :: Sonnet essays

Sonnets 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16, and 17 The first 17 sonnets are addressed to a young man of exceptional beauty who is encouraged to father children. What is striking about this series is that there are exactly 17 sonnets that are all centred on encouraging the young man to marry and father children. Seventeen is an unusual and distinctive number that seems to indicate its own significance. The content of the sonnets shows no evidence of input to them from outside of the author during their development: no questions are answered, there is no change of direction in response to any feedback from the subject, they appear to be a preset series issued together. The deliberate intent of these sonnets and the fact that a sonnet itself conforms to regular numbering schemes also suggests that the series containing precisely 17 is not accidental. The encouragement of a person to marry and father children is an unusual theme, if not unique, in the world of Elizabethan poetry. That the author himself should have been personally motivated to invest such time and effort and have the temerity to do such a thing strikes me as extremely unlikely. In an age of commissioned poetic works, this series of sonnets being commissioned from the author by another party seems to be the most plausible scenario by which such a poetic work could only come about. The series betrays a lack of understanding of why the subject fails to marry and have children of his own accord: Sonnet 3 asks what fair woman would not welcome the opportunity of being the subject's wife: "For where is she so fair whose uneared womb Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?" and what man would willingly fail to leave children: "Or who is he so fond will be the tomb Of his self-love to stop posterity?" Sonnet 4 asks why the subject does not continue his legacy of beauty: "Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?" and why he fails to pass on his beauty in the form of children: "Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse The bounteous largess given thee to give?" and what he will leave behind him when has died: