Sonnet 9

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Sonnet 9 in the 1609 Quarto
Q1 Q2 Q3 C Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye That thou consum’st thyself in single life? Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die. The world will wail thee, like a makeless wife; The world will be thy widow, and still weep That thou no form of thee hast left behind, When every private widow well may keep By children’s eyes her husband’s shape in mind. Look, what an unthrift in the world doth spend Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it; But beauty’s waste hath in the world an end, And kept unus’d, the user so destroys it. No love toward others in that bosom sits That on himself such murderous shame commits. 4 8 12 14 —William Shakespeare

Sonnet 9is one of154 sonnetswritten by the English playwright and poetWilliam Shakespeare.It is aprocreation sonnetwithin theFair Youthsequence.

BecauseSonnet 10pursues and amplifies the theme of "hatred against the world" which appears rather suddenly in the final couplet of this sonnet, one may well say thatSonnet 9andSonnet 10form a diptych, even though the form of linkage is different from the case ofSonnets 5 and 6orSonnets 15 and 16.

Structure

Sonnet 9 is an English or Shakespeareansonnet.Sonnets of this type comprise 14 lines, containing threequatrainsand a finalcouplet,with therhyme schemeABAB CDCD EFEF GG. They are composed iniambic pentameterametrical linebased on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. Ambiguity can exist in thescansionof some lines. The weak words (lacking any tonic stress) beginning the poem allow the first line to be scanned as a regular pentameter:

× / × / × / × / × /
Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye (9.1)

/ =ictus,a metrically strong syllabic position. × =nonictus.

...or as containing an initial reversal:

/ × × / × / × / × /
Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye (9.1)

Synopsis and analysis

Sonnet 9 argues again that the so-called "Fair Youth" should marry and father children. The poet first asks if the reason he has remained single was a "fear" that, if he were to die, he would leave some woman a widow and in tears ( "to wet a widow's eye" ). The poet also exclaims, "Ah," a musing and a sigh before the wailing to come. If the "Fair Youth" were to die without children, then the world would lament his absence as might a wife without a mate. The public world would be his widow and forever weep because he has left behind no figure of himself.

Shakespeareargues that the young man should at least leave his widow with child before he dies, and that at least a widow will always have the image of her children to console her after her loss. Shakespeare then talks in the language of economics, concluding that if beauty is not put to (procreative) use and is hoarded as if by a non-yielding, sexual miser ( "kept unused" ), he will destroy it. The sonnet ends with the scathing declaration that if the young man does not marry and have children, he is committing "murderous shame" upon himself. Since no outgoing "love" dwells in his "bosom", he is likeNarcissus,guilty of self-love.

Further reading

• Baldwin, T. W. (1950).On the Literary Genetics of Shakspeare's Sonnets.University of Illinois Press, Urbana.
• Hubler, Edwin (1952).The Sense of Shakespeare's Sonnets.Princeton University Press, Princeton.
• Schoenfeldt, Michael (2007).The Sonnets: The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's Poetry.Patrick Cheney, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

First edition and facsimile

• Shakespeare, William(1609).Shake-speares Sonnets: Never Before Imprinted.London:Thomas Thorpe.
• Lee, Sidney,ed. (1905).Shakespeares Sonnets: Being a reproduction in facsimile of the first edition.Oxford:Clarendon Press.OCLC458829162.

Variorum editions

• Alden, Raymond Macdonald,ed. (1916).The Sonnets of Shakespeare.Boston:Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.OCLC234756.
• Rollins, Hyder Edward,ed. (1944).A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: The Sonnets [2 Volumes].Philadelphia:J. B. Lippincott & Co.OCLC6028485.—Volume IandVolume IIat theInternet Archive

Modern critical editions

• Atkins, Carl D., ed. (2007).Shakespeare's Sonnets: With Three Hundred Years of Commentary.Madison:Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.ISBN978-0-8386-4163-7.OCLC86090499.
• Booth, Stephen,ed. (2000) [1st ed. 1977].Shakespeare's Sonnets(Rev. ed.). New Haven:Yale Nota Bene.ISBN0-300-01959-9.OCLC2968040.
• Burrow, Colin, ed. (2002).The Complete Sonnets and Poems.The Oxford Shakespeare.Oxford:Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0192819338.OCLC48532938.
• Duncan-Jones, Katherine,ed. (2010) [1st ed. 1997].Shakespeare's Sonnets.Arden Shakespeare,third series (Rev. ed.). London:Bloomsbury.ISBN978-1-4080-1797-5.OCLC755065951.—1st editionat theInternet Archive
• Evans, G. Blakemore,ed. (1996).The Sonnets.The New Cambridge Shakespeare.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-0521294034.OCLC32272082.
• Kerrigan, John,ed. (1995) [1st ed. 1986].The Sonnets; and, A Lover's Complaint.New Penguin Shakespeare(Rev. ed.).Penguin Books.ISBN0-14-070732-8.OCLC15018446.
• Mowat, Barbara A.; Werstine, Paul, eds. (2006).Shakespeare's Sonnets & Poems.Folger Shakespeare Library.New York:Washington Square Press.ISBN978-0743273282.OCLC64594469.
• Orgel, Stephen,ed. (2001).The Sonnets.The Pelican Shakespeare (Rev. ed.). New York:Penguin Books.ISBN978-0140714531.OCLC46683809.
• Vendler, Helen,ed. (1997).The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets.Cambridge, Massachusetts:The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.ISBN0-674-63712-7.OCLC36806589.

External links

• Works related toSonnet 9 (Shakespeare)at Wikisource
• Paraphrase of sonnet in modern language
• Analysis of the sonnet