Shakespeare’s early sonnets are all appeals to a beautiful person to have kids, as opposed to being shut up in the personal love of their own beauty.
The clarity of Shakespeare’s vision! He saw all the way through beauty, containing the apparent level of the human body and face within the eternal and superabundant good of the self as opposed to the peculiar, corruptible good of the self. The first sonnets strike us as bizarre because we can’t see the beauty of the human form with the same universal clarity that he did. All we can read is a series of what seem to be odd (embarrassing) sonnets about how some guy should stop looking at himself and have kids. Eew! Icky! Lighten up!
The early sonnets are the guarantee and proof of the perfection of Shakespeare’s art. He proves to us that he sees exactly what beauty is. He will never be a dupe for mere superficial sentiment or the drunken urges of youth or a cheap emotional gimmick.
