Sonnet One

To be honest if I was W.H., the man to which the sonnet was written, I would be a little insulted by this poem,if I could in fact understand it at all. At first he calls the young beautiful, then he gives him a hearty smack in the face by saying that his beauty will fade and he will in fact be ugly. I think it's a little strange how he's trying to encourage the young man to procreate with insults and flattery simultaneously. I understand that Shakespeare is trying to flatter the young man and convince him to pass on his beauty, but don't you think he could go a better road? I think that Skakespeare could have toned down the creep factor, and maybe been a little less forward with it. He could have been a little more subtle. I thought that it was definatley a good, very persuasive point when Shakespeare used imortality as his main point. Very Clever.