A commentary on Shakespeare’s 87th sonnet ‘Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing’. Nobody could accuse Sonnet 87 of failing to begin dramatically. One of the more famous sonnets in Shakespeare’s sequence of 154 poems about love, sex, desire, wigs (see Sonnet 68), and rivalry, Sonnet 87 is also […]
A commentary on Shakespeare’s 83rd sonnet Sonnet 83 continues the theme Shakespeare treated in the previous sonnet, by comparing his own poetry about the Fair Youth with the poetic efforts of some rival poets. Before we move to an analysis of Sonnet 83, here’s a reminder of the poem: I […]
A commentary on a classic Shakespeare sonnet ‘I grant thou wert not married to my Muse’ is the 82nd sonnet in Shakespeare’s sequence of 154 sonnets charting the romantic drama that’s played out between the poet, the Fair Youth, the Dark Lady, and the rival poet. In this poem, Shakespeare […]
A reading of a classic Shakespeare sonnet Shakespeare’s Sonnet 81 (‘Or I shall live your epitaph to make’) is another poem that deals with the notion of immortality through poetry: the poet will make the Fair Youth live on through his verses about him. Stephen Booth, in his analysis of […]
A reading of a classic Shakespeare sonnet ‘That time of year thou mayst in me behold’ is one of the most widely anthologised sonnets by William Shakespeare, and is often praised as one of the most successfully constructed, and most moving, of all the Sonnets. Before we proceed to a […]