Sonnet 3 by William Shakespere

Stanza 2

In the second quatrein the speaking voice goes on talking about the mother and in this way he links the first and the second quatrein. He says that nowone girls would not marry the Fair Youth and then the speaking voice make a quastion to the Fair youth, asking him if he is ready to die negleting his fair values to next generations. So, the second quatrein is made by two question asked by the speaking voice and adressed to the Fair youth for making him think about what he should do and they have the function to scold him. The question are rethorical: infact they do no have a right answer, beacuse the speaking voice provides it himself , understandable to the intelligent reader that understand the speaking voice’s objective.

Considering the third stanza, the reader notice that in the first two line there is a methafor; infact the spaking voice uses the fair youth as he were a glass in which his mother relive her youth with him. “April” infact rappresent the mother’s youth, and at the same time the word “glass” creates a parallelism between the first lines of the first and third stanza. The first two lines of the third quatrein have the function to give prestige and to exalt the figure of fair youth, that is needed to make him understand that if he won’t have children, he will not use them to relive his past moments beacuse he will be lonely. Moreover, the speaking voice urge the fair youth to marry and to have children because he wants him to have a safe destiny in which Time doesn’t touch him. In this way, the theme of time is always in the background thanks to the words used which belong to this semantic field like “thine age”,”wrinkles”, “golden time”

Finally, considering the rhyming couplet the speaking voice scolds the fair youth saying that if he wants to die lonely, without being remembered he will be lonely with his fair imagine. In this way the speaking voice ends his sonnet not adfirming again his thought but letting the Fair youth free to decide. He only have to remember what the spaking voice has said to him, and decides what doing. In this two line there is a contrast between life and death, underlied by the use of words “live” and “die”. This means that the theme of time is always in the background, as to say that the fair youth do not have to waste his time.