the sonnet. However, there are scholars who defend the use of "his". Stephen Booth simply contends that this is done to move away from the mythological allusion and focuses on the nightingale: It is the male nightingale that sings. While David West also offers a defense of the use of "his," his reasoning differs greatly from Booth. West contends that Shakespeare used his for a variety of reasons, among his reasons being to avoid " the embarrassment of comparing [his lover] to a female." Another reason defense put forth by West is a difference in language. In Elizabethan times, his was used as a neutral pronoun, often used where a modern writer would use "its". Quatrain 3 The third quatrain continues the metaphor of the nightingale and seasonal imagery to further stress that the poet's silence is not because their love is less pleasant. The nightingale is used as a metaphor to explain that just because he does not flatter the Fair Youth, does not mean that he loves less. As one scholar put it, "too much praise ceases to please". The poet explains his silence further in line 11, that the wild birds physically burden the tree branches as well as crowd the air with their songs. This may represent the myriad of love sonnets being published in attempt to flatter and please their muses. A similar interpretation of line 12 by Katherine Duncan-Jones is given, in which she claims that the poet is addressing the many circulating love sonnets as somewhat redundant, describes them as "pleasures which have become familiar are no longer intensely enjoyable". This is a usage of another common proverb; "Too much familiarity breeds contempt." Couplet The couplet summarizes the sonnet in two lines, "Therefore, like her, I sometime hold my tongue, because I would not dull you with my song". This is a clear statement from the poet vocalizing for the final time that he will not dull, bore, or represent his muse in a tedious way by creating a sonnet as exhausted and clichéd as his contemporaries. In his analysis of the couplet, Stephen Booth compares the couplet to a proverb: "My desire is not to dull you, if I cannot delight you." Booth suggests that the poet does not wish to make his lover seem common with overabundant praise. Aitkins similarly suggests that the poet does not wish his praises to become