Shakespeare's Sonnets

A Shakespearean or English sonnet has fourteen lines, consisting of three groups of four lines each, followed by a single rhyming couplet. The rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg. Every (or nearly...

In Italian, a "sonnet" means a small song devoted to a solo or single idea. Though invented in Sicily sometime in the 1220s, the Italian sonnet was perfected by Frances Petrarch in the fourteenth...

Shakespeare relies on strong visual imagery to deliver the similes in Sonnet 130. These devices ultimately demonstrate the type of love he shares with his beloved. For the majority of this sonnet,...

Sonnet 116, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds," is one of the most well-known of William Shakespeare's sonnets. Sonnet 116 was published with the other sonnets in 1604, but these aren't the...

At first glance, the mood and tone of Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 is one of deep love and affection. It is highly sentimental and full of feeling. This sonnet may seem at first to simply praise the...

Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 is a testament to the abiding power of love. These lines mean that time cannot change love. Father Time, the personification of time, is often pictured with a scythe, or a...

In writing sonnets, Shakespeare was continuing a trend that had been established in Italy by Petrarch in the fourteenth century and which had become extremely popular in England in the sixteenth...

In addition to the other answers, this poem also makes use of apostrophe. Apostrophe is when the speaker of the poem addresses someone who is absent, an abstract idea (e.g., love, time), or an...

Imagery is description using any of the five senses of sight, sound, taste, touch, or smell. The imagery in Shakespeare's "Sonnet 130" pokes fun at or parodies the conventionalized love imagery...

There are 154 Shakespearean sonnets. They were not written as a coherent narrative but rather as individual poems, and thus, although there are certain themes that recur across several individual...

Both the Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnets consist of fourteen lines and are written in iambic pentameter. This means that each line, generally speaking, will have five (penta-) feet, with each...

He is talking about Time, personified in this poem as being largely congruent with Death. In brief strokes, the speaker depicts the figure of Time as carrying a sickle, an accessory which...

Sonnet 116 is one of Shakespeare's most famous sonnets, concerned as it is with unconditional love which does not alter "when it alteration finds." The poem is full of imagery, beginning with the...

With these words, Shakespeare is trying to justify the view of true love that he's spent the rest of the poem expressing. He's told us that true love is unchanging, that it is a timeless ideal that...

Most sonnets are love poems; at least, we can say this about Shakespearean sonnets. So there must be something particular about this sonnet that makes it so memorable. Perhaps it is something about...

Shakespeare's "Sonnet 130" has often been called something along the lines of a "winsome trifle" designed to be merely funny, which it is, but Shakespeare is also gently satirizing the conventions...

Two central images are used in Shakespeare's Sonnet 116. Stanza two presents the image of love as constant as a star used by navigators to determine the location of ships. The image is an extended...

"Love's not Time's fool" captures the controlling metaphor of this Shakespearean sonnet as all other lines reinforce this sentiment: "Love is not love" if it changes with the corrosive power of...

You need to read the line in context and not separate from the rest of the poem. That said, here is the full text of the sonnet:Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?Thou art more lovely and more...

You are right in saying that these two sonnets are extremely similar. Shakespeare's sonnets are believed to have been written in the order in which they are now numbered, and this is often evident...

The tone in Petrarch's Sonnet 292 undergoes several shifts. The first is between Stanzas 1 and 2 where the poet switches from awed reminiscence of the special distinction his love for the woman...

The main theme of the sonnet is love or longing for the presence of one physically absent. The sonnet begins with a description of the hard physical labor of travelling during the day. It describes...

The speaker in both sonnets is a man (presumably) who does not care about what a woman looks like, only how beautiful she is inside. He is mature enough to overlook physicality and focus on the...

Snow: The speaker, defying the conventions of traditional love poetry, claims his mistress's skin is not as white as snow. Roses: This may be the most significant symbol. Roses are a staple of...

In addition to his formidable output as a playwright, William Shakespeare wrote a particular form of poem called a sonnet. He is credited with 154 sonnets, almost all of which follow the same...

The problem in sonnet 18 is that everything in nature dies. The poet wants to find some great metaphor to compare his love to, but none of the traditional metaphors work. Why? Because everything in...

You've said you're comfortable with the concepts of consonance and assonance, but it might be useful just to recap. Both of these are sound devices, which can be used to create a sense of internal...

The first rule in trying to figure out what a line of poetry means is to find the end punctuation (in this case, a "period") and back up to the beginning of the thought. Line 12 can't make any...

Both of these sonnets seem not only to recognize the humanity of the speaker's beloved but also to revel in that humanity rather than attempting to deny or beautify it. The poems recognize that...

Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 is indeed, like his other sonnets, written in iambic pentameter: a regular metrical form in which there are five "feet" (a pair of syllables in which the first is...

The figurative language used in this poem is largely metaphorical. Shakespeare uses a number of metaphors to expound upon the idea of love as "an ever-fixed mark," something constant like a "star"...

Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 comes close to being an extended simile, without ever quite being one. A poem which said "You are like a summer's day, in the following ways" would clearly be a simile on...

Much critical analysis has been done with the whole sonnet sequence, and while there are no definitive answers, an interesting theory is that he is writing what we know as the first 75+ sonnets in...

Shakespeare uses his sonnets to explore love from as many perspectives as possible. For example, in Sonnet 130, he actually mocks typical love sonnet conventions in order to provide a more...

Figurative language is language beyond the dry and literal words we might find in a tax summary or a scientific report that only recorded facts. Figurative language, in contrast, adds a layer of...

Shakespeare certainly does have several sonnets that concern the theme of friendship. One of the best examples can be seen in Sonnet 29. This sonnet opens with the speaker feeling in a state of...

The poem entitled "Time Does Not Bring Relief: You All Have Lied" by Edna St. Vincent Millay is a sonnet of 14 lines. The poem is formal verse as opposed to free verse. The poem is written in...

The poem is a lament by the speaker about fickleness. The speaker, upon an occasion, hears a nightingale sing and takes pity on the poor bird for its beautiful song sounds like a wail. He then...

In this sonnet, the star is functioning as something that is constant, something a wanderer could look to in order to get his bearings and know where he is. Without the aid of modern navigational...

There are two comparisons between Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 and 130. The first is that both speak of rosy cheeks. The second is that they echo in very styles the same theme: "marriage of true...

Shakespeare glorifies his friend in two ways, as evidenced in the structure of the poem. In the first six lines, he compares his friend to a summer day and explains how summer is less perfect and...

This is an interesting question, and I'm glad that you you make the distinction between Shakespeare as the author conveying homoerotic desires through the sonnets and questioning whether the...

The speaker in sonnet 73 compares himself to yellowed leaves, ruined church buildings, twilight, sunset and a last glowing ember lying in the ashes of a fire that is almost burned out. All of these...

In Sonnet 29, love has the power to comfort the speaker despite his "disgrace" with other men, his "outcast state," his cursed fate, and his envy of others. He feels as though he is brought to...

Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18" is perhaps Shakespeare most famous sonnet and as such the most famous English language sonnet. Much of its popularity comes from its perfect form. There is no what we...

Shakespeare shows the passage of time by referring to "count[ing] the clock" (line 1) and addressing the "brave day sunk in hideous night" (line 2). Thus, he lets us know that time is passing, and...

The poem deals mainly with dishonesty and loyalty. Throughout the sonnet, Shakespeare focuses the reader's attention on the dishonest relationship the speaker shares with his lover. Both lie to...

Both sonnets XVIII and CXVI explore the enduring nature of love, though they do so in different ways and with an emphasis on different aspects of love. Sonnet XVIII is ostensibly concerned with the...

The word "this" in line 14 of Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 refers to the poem itself. Sonnet 18 is one of several sonnets in which the speaker proclaims that his love for his friend and his friend's...

The sonnets of William Shakespeare were his final non-dramatic works to receive publication (in 1609, although several had received prior publication). Most historians agree that the sonnets were...