12. Makest waste in niggarding. Compare Romeo and Juliet, Act I. sc. 1, 1. 223 :

:

BEN. Then she hath sworn that she will still live chaste? ROM. She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste.

13, 14. Pity the world, or else be a glutton devouring the world's due, by means of the grave (which will swallow your beauty-compare Sonnet LXXVII. 6, and note), and of yourself, who refuse to beget offspring. Compare All's Well, Act I. sc. 1, Parolles speaking, "Virginity. consumes itself to the very paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach." Steevens proposed "be thy grave and thee,” i.e., be at once thyself and thy grave.

II. Perhaps in anticipating a time when his friend's child may represent that friend's lost beauty and the warm blood of youth (1. 14), Shakspere pictures the son as of like years with Shakspere's friend when the sonnet was written. If the friend were now about twenty, in twenty years more, when he should be forty, his son might be twenty. Shakspere fixes on so early an age as forty because, had he said fifty, it might have allowed time for his friend's son to pass beyond the point of youthful perfection to which Shakspere's friend has now attained, and this is forbidden by the idea of the sonnet.

Perhaps the forty years are counted from the present age of the young friend, bringing him thus to about sixty years of age.

It has, however, been shown by Prof. Elze (ShakespeareJahrbuch, Bd. xi. pp. 288-294) that Elizabethan writers

often use four, forty, and forty thousand to express an indefinite number. The usage is also common in German. Krauss cites from Sidney's Arcadia two examples of "forty winters."

In Sonnet I. the Friend is "contracted to his own bright eyes;" such a marriage is fruitless, and at forty the eyes will be "deep-sunken." The "glutton" of I. reappears here in the phrase "all-eating shame;" the "makest waste" of I. reappears in the "thriftless praise" of II. Hazlitt reads whole excuse.

8. Thriftless praise, unprofitable praise. less sighs shall poor Olivia breathe!" Act II. sc. 2, 1. 40.

"What thrift

Twelfth Night,

11. Shall sum my count and make my old excuse, shall complete my account, and serve as the excuse of my oldness.

III. A proof by example of the truth set forth in II. Here is a parent finding in a child the excuse for age and wrinkles. But here that parent is the mother. Were the father of Shakspere's friend living, it would have been natural to mention him; XIII. 14 “ you had a father" confirms our impression that he was dead. There are two kinds of mirrors-first, that of glass; secondly, a child who reflects his parent's beauty.

5. Unear'd, unploughed. Compare the Dedication of Venus and Adonis, “I shall never after ear so barren a land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest."

5, 6. Compare Measure for Measure, Act 1. sc. 4, 11. 43, 44:

Her plenteous womb

Expresseth his full tilth and husbandry.

7, 8. Compare Venus and Adonis, 11. 757-761:

What is thy body but a swallowing grave
Seeming to bury that posterity,

Which by the rights of time thou needs must have,
If thou destroy them not in dark obscurity?

9, 10. Compare Lucrece, 11. 1758, 1759 (old Lucretius addressing his dead daughter) :

Poor broken glass, I often did behold

In thy sweet semblance my old age new-born.

11. Compare A Lover's Complaint, 1. 14 :

Some beauty peep'd through lattice of sear'd age.

12. Golden time. So King Richard III., Act I. sc. 2, 1. 248," the golden prime of this sweet prince."

13. If thou live. Capell suggests love.

IV. In Sonnet III. Shakspere has viewed his friend as an inheritor of beauty from his mother; this legacy of beauty is now regarded as the bequest of nature. The ideas of unthriftiness (1. 1) and niggardliness (1. 5) are derived from Sonnets I., II.; the "audit" (1. 12) is another form of the "sum my count of II. 11. The new idea introduced in this sonnet is that of usury, which reappears in VI. 5, 6.

3. So Measure for Measure, Act I. sc. 1, 11. 36-41. Shakspere imagines Nature, as a thrifty goddess, lending, but, like a strict creditor, exacting thanks and interest.

Spirits are not finely touch'd

But to fine issues, nor Nature never lends

The smallest scruple of her excellence

But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,

Both thanks and use.

Compare with this sonnet the arguments put into the mouth of Comus by Milton: Comus, 679-684:

Why should you be so cruel to yourself
And to those dainty limbs which Nature lent

For gentle usage, and soft delicacy?

But you invert the covenants of her trust,
And harshly deal like an ill-borrower

With that which you received on other terms;

and 11. 720-727:

If all the world

Should in a pet of temperance feed on pulse,

Drink the clear stream, and nothing wear but frieze,
The All-giver would be unthanked, would be unpraised,
Not half his riches known, and yet despised;

And we would serve him as a grudging master,

As a penurious niggard of his wealth,

And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons.

4. Free, liberal.

8. Live, subsist. With all your usury you have not a livelihood, for trafficking only with yourself, you put a cheat upon yourself, and win nothing by such usury. 14. Th' executor. Malone reads "thy executor."

V. In Sonnets V., VI., youth and age are compared to the seasons of the year: in VII. they are compared to morning and evening, the seasons of the day.

1. Hours, a dissyllable, as in The Tempest, Act v. 1. 4. "On the sixth hour; at which time my lord."

2. Gaze, object gazed at, as in Macbeth, Act v. sc. 8, "Live to be the show and gaze o' the time.”

1. 24.

4. Unfair, deprive of beauty; not elsewhere used by Shakspere, but in Sonnet CXXVII. we find, "Fairing the foul with art's false borrow'd face."

9. Summer's distillation, perfumes made from flowers. Compare Sonnet LIV. and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Act I. sc. 1, 11. 76, 77:

Earthlier happy is the rose distill'd,

Than that which withering on the virgin thorn
Grows, lives and dies in single blessedness.

14. Leese, lose. In the Authorized Version of the Bible, 1 Kings xviii. 5, this word occurred, "that we leese not all the beasts;" it has been changed to "lose" in modern editions.

VI. This sonnet carries on the thoughts of IV. and v. -the distilling of perfume from V., and the interest paid on money lent from IV.

5. Use, interest, as in Much Ado, Act II. sc. 1, 1. 288: "Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile; and I gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one." Compare with this sonnet the solicitation of Adonis by Venus, 11. 767, 768.

Foul cankering rust the hidden treasure frets,
But gold that's put to use more gold begets.

And Merchant of Venice, Act 1, sc 3, 11. 70-97. Shylock,