From Fairest Creatures We Desire Increase is the first line of the first sonnet by the great English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. Shakespeare is considered the finest dramatist who wrote in English. He is also one of the best English poets. See Shakespeare, William.
Shakespeare’s sonnets were published in 1609, when he had already become a successful playwright. No one knows when Shakespeare wrote the poems, but he probably composed them over several years. There are 154 sonnets in the sequence, though some scholars believe that a different author wrote Sonnets 153 and 154, those focused on Cupid, the Roman god of love. Only two of the sonnets were published before 1609, in a collection called The Passionate Pilgrim (1599).
Like almost all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, Sonnet 1 consists of three quatrains (four-line units) followed by a concluding couplet (two-line unit). Each quatrain has a rhyme scheme of abab, cdcd, efef, with the final couplet a rhyming one (gg).
From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty’s rose might never die, But as the riper should by time decrease, His tender heir might bear his memory; But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies, Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel. Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament And only herald to the gaudy spring, Within thine own bud buriest thy content, And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding. Pity the world, or else this glutton be, To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.
In this sonnet, Shakespeare addresses the issues of time, beauty, and the continuation of human life through reproduction. The sonnet is addressed to an unidentified young nobleman. Like the 16 sonnets that follow, Sonnet 1 is concerned specifically with trying to persuade the youth to marry. The sonnet begins with the argument that it is the young man’s duty to continue his beauty through “increase.” His refusal to marry and bring children into the world is essentially a “waste” for humankind.
The poet’s tone is both affectionate and chiding, scolding the man for his self-centeredness. The sonnet uses images of a self-consuming candle (“thy light’s flame”) and an unopened flower (“thine own bud”) to show the dangers of inward-focused energy. In a continuing metaphor of feeding, Shakespeare contrasts nourishing abundance with selfish gluttony (excess in eating) that results in famine. He concludes his argument by begging the youth to pity the world: “Pity the world, or else this glutton be/ To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.”
As in so many of his other sonnets, Shakespeare’s metaphors hinge on paradox (a seeming contradiction in meaning). Images of famine, starving, and denial are described as indulgent gluttony. The youth is essentially accused of “eating” his own offspring, which is the “world’s due.” But such gluttony paradoxically results in death and a consuming of the young man by the grave.
On a more general level, the poem makes us consider the concept of creation, and its potential as a weapon against time. Many of the later sonnets deal with the idea of poetry itself as creation. The poem is presented as an immortal thing that will outlive its author. In Sonnet 1, we are introduced to the theme of the role of human creation in the consideration of life.
Critics have suggested that Sonnet 1 was composed after the other sonnets in the first group, as a deliberate introduction to the other sonnets. Whatever the origins of Sonnet 1, it introduces us to many of the important themes that will occupy Shakespeare throughout the sonnet collection.
For more information about Shakespeare’s sonnets, see Shakespeare, William (Shakespeare’s poems). See also English literature (Elizabethan poetry); Poetry (Forms) (History) (Renaissance poetry).
