Sonnet 8 claims that the young man hears music sadly because harmony reproaches him: a chord needs several notes sounding together, just as a family needs husband, wife, and child, and a man who stays single will amount to nothing.
Sonnet 8: Full Poem
Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.
Why lov’st thou that which thou receiv’st not gladly,
Or else receiv’st with pleasure thine annoy?
If the true concord of well-tunèd sounds,
By unions married, do offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.
Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,
Resembling sire and child and happy mother,
Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing;
Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,
Sings this to thee: “Thou single wilt prove none.”
Text from the 1609 Quarto, with spelling and punctuation lightly modernized.
At a Glance
Here are the key facts about Sonnet 8 for quick reference.
What Sonnet 8 Means
Sonnet 8 starts from a small puzzle, a young man who seems sad when he listens to music, and turns it into an argument for marriage.
The first quatrain asks the question. You are yourself like music to listen to, so why do you hear music sadly? Sweet things do not fight with sweet things, and joy takes delight in joy. Why do you love something you do not enjoy, or enjoy something that only troubles you?
The second quatrain offers a diagnosis. If the true harmony of well-tuned notes, joined together like a married couple, offends your ear, it is because that harmony is gently scolding you. By staying single, you are refusing to play the parts in life’s music that you ought to play.
The third quatrain gives a demonstration. Notice how one string, like a loving husband to another, makes the other sound with it in perfect order. Together they resemble a father, a child, and a happy mother, who all sing one pleasing note as one.
The couplet lets the music speak. Their wordless song, made of many notes that seem to be one, sings this warning to the young man: if you stay single, you will come to nothing.
Sonnet 8 Line by Line
Each line, with the sense of it in plain English.
Themes
Sonnet 8 is the gentlest of the early Procreation Sonnets, and its themes all grow from one comparison between music and family.
Harmony Needs More Than One
A chord is sweet only because its notes sound together. One string alone, however true, cannot make harmony. The poem does not need to argue that the young man should marry; it only needs him to hear that a single note is not music. To accept the comparison is already to accept the demand.
Sadness as a Signal
Earlier sonnets threaten decay or appeal to vanity. Sonnet 8 begins from sympathy, noticing that the young man is sad when he hears something beautiful. It reads that sadness generously, as his own ear telling him what he lacks. The music does not attack him; it “sweetly” chides.
The Family as a Chord
The strings become “sire and child and happy mother,” three voices that sing “all in one.” Marriage and parenthood are pictured not as duties but as music, several distinct parts making a single sound. It is the warmest picture of family in the Procreation Sonnets.
Form and Language
Sonnet 8 sustains one musical metaphor from its first word to its last, and much of its language works in two senses at once.
Meter and Rhyme
The poem is a Shakespearean sonnet in iambic pentameter, rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Four of its lines end with an extra unstressed syllable, “sadly,” “gladly,” “another,” and “mother,” which gives them a soft, falling sound, like a note fading out.
“Music to Hear”
The first words address the young man as music itself: he is “music to hear,” a pleasure to listen to. The line sets him up as both the listener and the thing worth listening to, which makes his sadness at music a kind of sadness at himself.
Words with Two Meanings
Much of the vocabulary belongs to music and marriage at once. Notes are joined “by unions married”; a string is a “sweet husband” to another; the young man refuses “the parts that thou shouldst bear,” meaning both musical parts and roles in a family. The double meanings let the poem argue for marriage while seeming only to describe music.
“Thou Single Wilt Prove None”
The last line works on several levels. An unmarried man leaves no descendants and so comes to nothing. A single note is not a chord. And an old saying held that “one is no number,” so a single thing, arithmetically, counts as none. Shakespeare returns to that saying much later, in the Dark Lady sonnets, where “Among a number one is reckoned none.”
A Closer Reading
Sonnet 8 describes strings that sound together in answer to each other, and that image explains both the young man’s sadness and what the poem is asking of him.
Lutes of Shakespeare’s time were strung with pairs of strings tuned together, so that each pair sounded as one. Line 10 describes something like that sympathy: one string “Strikes each in each by mutual ordering.” Each string is set sounding by the other, simply by being near it and in tune with it.
The image is a picture of love, and the poem sets the young man against it. He hears music and is not moved to joy; he “receiv’st not gladly” what he loves. He is the string that will not answer. The harmony around him should make him sound, and instead it only makes him sad, because it reminds him of the response he is refusing.
The couplet adds a final paradox. The strings’ song is “speechless,” and yet the poem gives it words, in quotation marks: “Thou single wilt prove none.” The music cannot speak, so the speaker speaks for it. In doing so, he becomes a second string himself, answering the young man’s beauty and trying to make him sound in return. The argument is for marriage, but the gesture, one voice set sounding by another, is already the speaker’s own.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about Sonnet 8, answered briefly.
Who Is Sonnet 8 Addressed To?
The young man of the Fair Youth sonnets, the same unnamed figure the Procreation Sonnets urge to marry and have children.
What Does “Music to Hear” Mean?
You who are music to listen to. The phrase addresses the young man as though he were music himself, a pleasure to hear.
What Does “Thou Single Wilt Prove None” Mean?
If you stay single, you will come to nothing. An unmarried man leaves no children, a single note makes no harmony, and, as an old saying had it, one on its own is no number at all.
What Is the Musical Image in Sonnet 8?
Strings sounding together in harmony. One string makes another sound with it, and together they are compared to a father, mother, and child singing one note, a family pictured as a chord.
How Is Sonnet 8 Different from the Earlier Procreation Sonnets?
It is gentler. Instead of warning about age or calling the young man a miser, it begins by noticing his sadness and reads it sympathetically. The music “sweetly” chides him rather than accusing him.
Related Sonnets
Three sonnets frame Sonnet 8’s argument about harmony and singleness.