Archive for November 22nd, 2008

Home of Anne Hathaway

I should call it “Shakespeare Saturday.” My readings of Shakespeare’s sonnets continue with Sonnet 3.

But first, a little biographical information that you may or may not have known about Shakespeare:

• He was married to Anne Hathaway, possibly because he’d gotten her pregnant.
• He had three children in all, Susanna (the eldest) and fraternal twins Hamnet and Judith.
• When Shakespeare died at the ripe old age of 52, he bequeathed to Anne his “second-best bed.”  How… sweet.

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 art 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.

What I get out of it

(more…)