Sonnet 3 : Look in Thy Glass and Tell the Face Thou Viewest
Introduction:
Sonnet 3 is the third of Shakespeare's seventeen 'Procreation Sonnets' and addressed to the 'Fair Youth'. The poet continues here the same he did in the antecedent sonnets but with a different approach.
Summary:
The speaker continues to advise the youth to realise his responsibility to soon assume his fatherhood in order to pass on his Beauty to next generation. The speaker reprimands the youth for his selfishness, showing no interest in having a child.
The speaker tells the youth to look at his mirror and tell himself that time has come to produce the exact replica of his own i.e, to have a child which resembles exactly his own face. If he denies doing so that means he is intentionally unfavourable to the world and his future wife, for there is no woman in the world who would deny having his child in her womb. And there is no man stupid like him die before having a child.
When the young man's aged mother looks at him, it's like looking her own face in the mirror. Similarly when he is old, when his own beauty declines, he can look at his child and thus regain his beauty. But the world will soon forget him if he dies before having a child.
