Sonnet 1

“Sonnet 1” is the first sonnet of Shakespeare’s sequence. Like most Shakespearean sonnets, this poem can be broken into four parts: three sections containing four lines (quatrains) and one section with two lines (a couplet). Generally, the speaker is read as Shakespeare.

In the first section, or quatrain, the speaker only refers to himself with the plural pronoun “we” (Line 1). He is part of a general consensus that the “fairest creatures” (Line 1) should increase their numbers. That is, the most beautiful people should create more beautiful people by having children. The good looks of such attractive people, figuratively speaking, are akin to “beauty’s rose” (Line 2). Women were often described as roses in the literature that predated and influenced Shakespeare, such as the Romance of the Rose from the Middle Ages. However, Shakespeare uses the rose metaphor to describe The Power of Beauty in general, here without a gendered referent (although later in the poem, it becomes clear that the addressee whose beauty the speaker worries about is a young man).

The first singular pronoun in the poem refers to the person being addressed—the addressee.