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Sonnet 1 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a procreation sonnet within the Fair Youth sequence. == Introduction == Sonnet 1 is the first in a series of 154 sonnets written by William Shakespeare that were published in 1609 by Thomas Thorpe.〔Cheney, Patrick. ''The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's Poetry.'' Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print, pg.127.〕 Nineteenth-century critics thought Thorpe might have published the poems without Shakespeare's consent; Sidney Lee called him "predatory and irresponsible." Conversely, modern scholars Wells and Taylor assert their verdict that "Thorpe was a reputable publisher, and there is nothing intrinsically irregular about his publication." Either way, this sonnet is considered the first in the sequence.〔Wells, Stanley, and Gary Taylor. ''William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion.'' New York, W. W. Norton, 1997, p. 444.〕〔Cheney, Patrick. ''The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's Poetry.'' Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print, pg. 127.〕 Analyzing the sonnets in this order allows for an underlying story of a love triangle to emerge. Sonnet 1 is part of the "Fair Youth" sonnets, in which an unnamed young man (the beloved) is being addressed by the speaker (the lover) and later sonnets also refer to a "dark lady" (thus they are called the "Dark Lady" sonnets).〔Cheney, Patrick. ''The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's Poetry.'' Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print, pg. 128.〕 Patrick Cheney comments on this: "Beginning with a putatively male speaker imploring a beautiful young man to reproduce, and concluding with a series of poems – the dark lady poems – that affiliate consummated heterosexual passion with incurable disease, Shakespeare's Sonnets radically and deliberately disrupt the conventional narrative of erotic courtship".〔Cheney, Patrick. ''The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's Poetry.'' Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print, pg. 128〕 Because of this, Sonnet 1 instantly attracts interest as being a kind of introduction (or possibly an index) to the rest of the sonnets.〔Vendler, Helen. ''The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets.'' Cambridge, MA: Belknap of Harvard UP, 1997. Print, pg. 47.〕 The 1st sonnet is also the first of the "procreation sonnets" (sonnets 1 – 17; including Sonnet 15 which, although it does not directly contain an encouragement to procreate is fully part of the sequence as it forms a diptych with Sonnet 16—note Sonnet 16 starts with the word "But..."—which does), which urge this youth to not waste his beauty by failing to marry or reproduce.〔Matz, Robert. ''The World of Shakespeare's Sonnets: An Introduction''. Jefferson, NC: McFarland &, 2008. Print, pg. 6.〕 Joseph Pequigney notes: "... the opening movement give(the ) expression to one compelling case... The first mode of preservation entertained is procreation, which is urged without letup in the first fourteen poems and twice again".〔Pequigney, Joseph. ''Such Is My Love: A Study of Shakespeare's Sonnets.'' Chicago: University of Chicago, 1985. Print, pg. 7.〕 The identity of the beloved "Fair Youth" has remained a mystery, but most researchers believe there are two potential candidates for whom the dedication of the "Fair Youth" Sonnets was written: "Henry Wriothesley, third earl of Southampton (1573-1624), or William Herbert, third earl of Pembroke (1580-1630)".〔Crosman, Robert. "Making Love out of Nothing at All: The Issue of Story in Shakespeare's Procreation Sonnets". ''Shakespeare Quarterly'' 41.4 (1990): 470-488. Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George Washington University. Web, pg. 477.〕 Both were patrons of Shakespeare but at different times – Wriothesley in the 1590s and Herbert in the 1600s. There is trouble finding out which earl it might have been because sonnets were in fashion in the 1590s but Shakespeare's were not published until 1609.〔 ''See: Identity of "Mr. W.H." In Sonnet 1, we begin to see the "love story" between the fair youth (beloved) and the speaker (lover) unfold, though not the typical "love story" of the Elizabethan era if read this way. However, each of Shakespeare's sonnets can still be read as separate from the other sonnets. In this sonnet, the speaker engages in an argument with the beloved/fair youth about procreation: "An agon, a dramatic struggle, develops between the speaker and the youth".〔Bennett, Kenneth C. Threading Shakespeare's Sonnets. Lake Forest, IL: Lake Forest College, 2007. Print, pg. 2.〕 Scholar Helen Vendler sums up Sonnet 1: "The different rhetorical moments of this sonnet (generalizing reflection, reproach, injunction, prophecy) are permeable to one another's metaphors, so that the rose of philosophical reflection yields the bud of direct address, and the famine of address yields the glutton who, in epigram, eats the world's due".〔Vendler, Helen. ''The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets.'' Cambridge, MA: Belknap of Harvard UP, 1997. Print, pg. 46.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sonnet 1」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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