The first sonnet of Shakespeare’s one hundred and fifty four sonnets is directed at the young man, Mister W.H. Since it is said that the young man’s parents hired a poet, Shakespeare, to write poems to persuade Mister W.H. to get married and have children, this poem seems to do just that. The speaker of the sonnet is saying that it would be selfish for the young man to not reproduce and keep all his beauty to himself. He also says that if he has children, his beauty will be preserved and live on forever in his child. He is being encouraged to “spread” his beauty and share it with the rest of the world. Also, I think that this sonnet in particular shows the love that the speaker also had for the young man. Whether it was a deep love or not, standards of the time were different and homosexuality wasn’t viewed any differently, and it wasn’t even a concept that society understood at that time.
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