“A Lover’s Complaint”
William Shakespeare (1564-1616), widely considered the
greatest playwright, if not the greatest writer, of all time was a heavy user
of threes in his plays. He wrote poetry
as well.
In
1593 and 1594 when the theaters in London were closed because of Bubonic
Plague, Shakespeare published two narrative poems, “Venus and Adonis” and “The
Rape of Lucrece.” A third narrative
poem, “A Lover’s Complaint,” was published in the first edition of his sonnets
in 1609. One of those sonnets, number
104, celebrates the Three and beauty:
To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I ey'd,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forests shook three summer's pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumns turn'd
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah, yet doth beauty, like a dial hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv'd!
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv'd;
For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred:
Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forests shook three summer's pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumns turn'd
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah, yet doth beauty, like a dial hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv'd!
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv'd;
For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred:
Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.
from Chapter 9, Threes, "Threes in Art and Popular Culture"
