Sonnet 1
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauties Rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heire might beare his memory;
But thou contracted to thine owne bright eyes,
Feed'st thy lights flame with selfe substantiall fewell,
Making a famine where aboundance lies,
Thy selfe thy foe, to thy sweet selfe too cruell:
Thou that art now the worlds fresh ornament,
And only herauld to the gaudy spring,
Within thine owne bud buriest thy content,
And tender chorle mak'st wast in niggarding:
Pitty the world, or else this glutton be,
To eate the worlds due, by the grave and thee.
Commentary
Address to a fair young man encouraging him to procreate
This is the first of several sonnets encouraging the young man to engage with the world, by implication by getting married and having sex. Note the Rose in line 2, which is italicised and capitalised in the original printing. It indicates very early the identity of the young man, Henry Wriothesley, pronounced Rosely. All ten proper names in the text are similarly capitalised and italicised.
The first quatrain puts forward the proposition that 'we' desire fair creatures to propagate themselves so that their beauty may continue, that as the older (riper) die, the young heir might act as a reminder of what was.
The second quatrain makes the point that the young man is preoccupied with himself, thus wasting his substance, and doing himself injury.
The third quatrain observes that the young man, though he is an ornament to the world and to spring, buries his self in himself (within thine own bud buriest thy content), and effectively wastes his substance in hoarding it, setting up a neat and paradoxical opposition between 'niggarding' and 'waste'.
The final couplet makes the point that the young man should take pity on the world, or else be guilty of the disappearance of his beauty, which belongs by rights to the world, in the same way that, later, the grave will be guilty of its disappearance. His behaviour in 'niggarding', ie not engaging his beauty with the world, effectively achieves what death will eventually achieve.