Shakespeare's Sonnet XVII, the last of his procreation sonnets, questions his own descriptions of the young man, believing that future generations will believe them to be exaggerations if he does not make a copy of himself (a child).

  Synopsis

Shakespeare insists that his comparisons, even though they are quite strong, are not exaggerations. Shakespeare even goes as far as to say that his verse is a "tomb" that hides half of his beauty. Shakespeare argues that the descriptions in fact are not strong enough, and they do not do justice to the man's beauty. ("If I could write the beauty of your eyes,/"). The sonnet ends with a typical notion that should the young man have a child, he shall live both in the child and in the poet's rhyme.

  Original text

The original text from 1609 Quarto for this sonnet is:

VVho will believe my verse in time to come

If it were filled with your most high deserts?

Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb

Which hides your life , and ſhewes not half your parts:

If I could write the beauty of your eyes,

And in fresh numbers number all your graces,

The age to come would ſay this Poet lies,

Such heavenly touches near touch earthly faces.

So should my papers (yellowed with their age)

Be ſcorn'd,like old men of less truth then tongue,

And your true rights be termed a Poets rage,

And stretched miter of an Antique ſong.

But were some child of yours alive that time,

You should live twice in it,and in my rime.

  Interpretations

• Richard Attenborough, for the 2002 compilation album, When Love Speaks (EMI Classics)

  Notes

As in Sonnet 130, Shakespeare shows himself again to be quite conscious and hesitant in terms of flamboyant, flowery proclamations of beauty.

  References

• Alden, Raymond (1916). The Sonnets of Shakespeare, with Variorum Reading and Commentary. Houghton-Mifflin, Boston.
• Baldwin, T. W. (1950). On the Literary Genetics of Shakspeare's Sonnets. University of Illinois Press, Urbana.
• Booth, Stephen (1977). Shakespeare's Sonnets. Yale University Press, New Haven.
• Dowden, Edward (1881). Shakespeare's Sonnets. London.
• Hubler, Edwin (1952). The Sense of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Princeton University Press, Princeton.
• Schoenfeldt, Michael (2007). The Sonnets: The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s Poetry. Patrick Cheney, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
• Tyler, Thomas (1989). Shakespeare’s Sonnets. London D. Nutt.
• Vendler, Helen (1997). The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

  External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Sonnet_17_(Shakespeare)

• Paraphrase and analysis (Shakespeare-online)
• Facsimile of 1609 edition of sonnet 17 part 1
• Facsimile of 1609 edition of sonnet 17 part 2
• Analysis
• CliffsNotes

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