“Sonnet 1” by William Shakespeare is the first in the sonnet sequence published in 1609. A few of Shakespeare’s sonnets appear in earlier works, such as his play Love’s Labour’s Lost; others were printed elsewhere, for example in The Passionate Pilgrime, a poetry anthology published by William Jaggard around 1598. By 1609, Shakespeare was an established playwright: His plays, including Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, were well known in London. To build on this success, his sonnet sequence was published as a complete set.

Shakespeare wrote during the flowering of the English Renaissance, a time of renewed interest in classical literature and translations of works from the continent. The English sonnet writers who influenced Shakespeare include earlier poets like Thomas Wyatt and contemporaries, such as Edmund Spenser and Philip Sidney. Wyatt’s importance to the popularity of the sonnet in English poetic tradition is key because he also translated the sonnets of 14th-century Italian poet Francesco Petrarca (typically anglicized as Petrarch), kicking off the resurgence of the form.

“Sonnet 1” explores the power of beauty, as well as its ability to defeat death—a source of anxiety for the poem’s speaker. These themes are presented using the motifs (repeated imagery) of roses and food.

Poet Biography

In 1564, William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-Upon-Avon. He was the first son, but not the first child, born to John Shakespeare and Mary Arden. In 1582, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway; the couple had three children: Susanna, Judith, and Hamnet, the last of whom died at age 11 in 1596. Shakespeare became well known in the London theater scene by 1592, becoming a playwright, actor, and impresario. Shakespeare died in 1616. In 1623, the first complete collection of his works, the First Folio, was published posthumously.

Although he is best known for his plays, Shakespeare’s first publication was the long narrative poem Venus and Adonis (1593). The following year, Shakespeare published his first play, Titus Andronicus. Soon, Shakespeare was successful enough to head an acting company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, which in 1599 established itself in the Globe Theatre. Over the course of his career, Shakespeare’s company had different names that reflected the change of monarchs: For instance, when James I became king in 1603, they became the King’s Men. Shakespeare’s best known plays, all of which are still highly popular and often performed, include King Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, among others.

In addition to writing for the theater, Shakespeare earned patronage with his poetry. In addition to Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare wrote The Rape of Lucrece (1594), a long narrative poem about a famous historical figure from ancient Roman history. Both poems were dedicated to the Earl of Southampton, who became Shakespeare’s patron. Although these longer poetic works were generally popular during Shakespeare’s lifetime, Shakespeare’s sonnets were less acclaimed. Now, the reputations are reversed, as the sonnets continue to be fodder for literary criticism and are often taught in school, while the narrative poems are less read. Partly, increased interest in the sonnets stems from the fact that we know relatively few details about Shakespeare’s life. Because the sonnets seem to be confessional, scholars have tried to extrapolate biographical information from them. The sequence contains several named addressees, which makes them appear to be more personally connected to their author: The speaker writes to a dark lady, a rival poet, and a young man, whose identities have been debated for centuries.

Poem text

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’s 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, mak’st waste in niggarding.

Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

Shakespeare, William. “Sonnet 1.” 1609. Folger Shakespeare Library.

Summary

In the first line of “Sonnet 1,” the speaker asserts that beautiful people should increase their numbers by reproducing (the term “increase” meant progeny). This is the only way to ensure that “beauty’s rose” (Line 2)—i.e., the fleeting bloom of this natural phenomenon—can become immortal. While individual roses ripen and die over time (Line 3), rose plants live on forever because each makes a “tender heir” (Line 4).

However, unlike this instructive example of the rose flowers, the addressee of the poem, or “you,” is not looking to produce an increase through marriage to someone else. Instead, the addressee is engaged to himself (“contracted to thine own bright eyes” (Line 5). Because of this, the addressee becomes the fuel of his own fire, using his energy to sustain himself. This refusal to share oneself with the world makes “a famine where abundance lies” (Line 7)—in other words, the addressee’s actions create unnecessary austerity. Because of this, the speaker accuses the addressee of being his own worst enemy: “Thyself thy foe” (Line 8).

While right now, the addressee is “the world’s fresh ornament” (Line 9)—a new decoration that the world can enjoy and a “herald” (Line 10) of the approaching spring season—soon enough, the addressee will kill the beauty that is “thine own bud” (Line 11). The stinginess of wasting youth without producing offspring makes the addressee into a mean-spirited spendthrift who “mak’st waste” (Line 12).

The sonnet’s last two lines are a plea for the addressee to “Pity the world” (Line 13) that clamors for him to ensure the continued existence of his beauty. If the addressee doesn’t, he will become a glutton, incurring one of seven gravest sins for hoarding the potential to reproduce by allowing death and himself to consume what the living world should have been able to continue to enjoy.