Theme: Young Man
Content: Encouragement for the subject to have children in an analogy of the concordance of music.
- “Why do you only hear music with sadness? Joyful things should delight the joyful.”
- The inferred dissonance in the music is echoed by the repeated use of sweets and joy in a single line: the subject is a sweet and a joy but is not in harmony with what is also sweet and joyful.
- Possible pun on "note" in not.
Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st
not gladly,
Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?
- “Why do you like things that you do not really like?”
- The inferred dissonance the subject feels and hears continues in these tongue-twisting 2 lines.
- In this disciplined sonnet, the first quatrain addresses the aural discord the subject apparently hears in the music of marriage.
If the true concord
of well-tuned
sounds
By unions
married
do
offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the
parts that thou shouldst bear.
- “If the harmonies of music do not appeal to you then they merely chide you for not appreciating how harmonious relationships can be and that you yourself could enjoy if you sired children.”
- Beautiful analogy of the harmony of music being the harmony of the constituent members of a family.
- The subject’s bachelor status is again referred to in singleness.
- Explicit reference to the essence of this series of sonnets in married.
- The rhyme of sounds with confounds emphasises the way the subject’s attitude to establishing a harmonious family of his own confounds his critics, those who themselves enjoy such harmony.
- There is likely a pun on the male French word un (meaning "one" or "single") in this quatrain signifying the discord experienced if the male subject remains "single" compared to the harmony within the "single" family unit if he marries: well-tuned sounds...unions...confounds.
- This French pun is matched by an English pun on one: concord...unions...confounds.
- Continuing the discipline of this sonnet, the second quatrain addresses the music of marriage itself.
Mark how one
string,
sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in
each by mutual ordering,
Resembling sire and child and happy mother,
Who all in one one
pleasing
note do sing;
- “See how music, like human relationships, are in concordance with each other.”
- Beautiful analogy of the complementary qualities of the components of music.
- Clever emphasis of the subject being able to retain his own individuality in a family unit (by way of one…each in each…one one) whilst creating, and being part of, something that is greater.
- The pun on the French word "un" now morphs into the explicit English word one and "single" alluded to in sing in this quatrain.
- Continuing the discipline of this sonnet, the third quatrain addresses the instruments that make the music of marriage.
Whose speechless song,
being many, seeming one,
Sings this to thee:
"Thou single
wilt prove none."
- “A single song, like a family unit, appears to be one thing, yet comprises many members, whilst a single person is nothing on their own, especially at their death.”
- Emphasis on singleness concludes with sONg, one, Sings and single, and in the negative form of none.
- Excellent analogy showing that the subject is someone in his own right plus a member of a harmonious group of people in a family, but that on his own the subject is nothing.
- Concluding the discipline of this sonnet, the couplet addresses the absence of the subject from the music of marriage.
- The subject is missing from the song which, in his absence, tells him that he will be nothing if he remains single.
Critical text © NigelDavies.home@Virgin.net