Sonnet 9 (Paperback)

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Sonnet 9 is another of Shakespeare's procreation sonnets. In it, he reasons that if the young man remains single so that he does not make a widow, he is wrong because if he dies the entire world will in effect be a widow, crying over the fact that he did not leave a child behind, or a copy of his beauty. To Shakespeare, a widow will always have the image of her children to console her after her loss. The sonnet ends with the scathing declaration that if the young man does not marry and have children, he is committing "murderous shame" upon himself.