Dec 21, 2009
Sonnet 94 is a typical English or Shakespearean sonnet: fourteen lines of iambic pentameter rhymed abab, cdcd, efef, gg. This rhyme scheme effectively divides the poem into three quatrains and a closing couplet, unlike the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet, which tends to be structured as an octave and sestet. In Sonnet 94, William Shakespeare’s first-person voice of the lover extols the virtue of stoic restraint and suggests that acting on emotions corrupts the natural nobility of a person’s character and, thus, compromises identity itself.
The first line...
[The entire page is 1339 words long]
©2000-2009
Enotes.com Inc.
All Rights Reserved