Interpreting Aging and Legacy in Shakespeare's Sonnet 3

Analysis of Sonnet 3

Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest

Now is the time that face should form another,

Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest

Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.

For where is she so fair whose unear'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?

Thou are 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.

But if thou live remember'd not to be,

Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

Shakespeare begins this sonnet by telling him he should realize, because of his aging, that it is time to produce a child, for is he does not, he cheats the world, mother earth, who then becomes an unblessed mother. The "mother" also refers to the mother of the would be child--she then being unblessed from the lack of a child. 5-6: 'What part of her, physicall or emotionally, keeps you from friuting her womb through procreation [an act that comes with marriage]?' 7-8: '(If not that reason), are you so narcissistic that you will bring the end of your family to the tomb?'

He is also referring to the mother of the would be child--she is unblessed by the lack of a child. 9-10: 'You are a reflection of your own mother, and she sees in you her youthful beauty'. 11-12: 'You shall see, through the memories of your past,that these are your golden years'. The couplet sums up the three quatrains in saying 'You will only be remembered in your own lifetime and not posthumously; for if you die without an heir, all memory for future generations of you is gone'.