A summary of Shakespeare’s 41st sonnet As opening lines go, ‘Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits’ is not up there with some of the opening lines that we’ve had earlier on in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, such as the rightly celebrated opening lines to Sonnet 18 and Sonnet 20. Nevertheless, this poem […]
A summary and paraphrase of Shakespeare’s 40th sonnet Of all Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Sonnet 40 is perhaps the most relentlessly focused on ‘love’: the word itself recurs ten times in the sonnet’s fourteen lines, including twice in the poem’s opening line: ‘Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all’. […]
The meaning of Shakespeare’s 39th sonnet ‘O how thy worth with manners may I sing, / When thou art all the better part of me?’ Another exercise in flattery, this, from the Bard: in Sonnet 39 he praises the Fair Youth for being … himself. Or rather, he says that […]
A summary of Shakespeare’s 38th sonnet We continue our exploration and analysis of Shakespeare’s sonnets this week with, predictably enough after Sonnet 37 last week, Sonnet 38. This is another poem about the Bard’s poetic inspiration, and explores the Fair Youth’s role as Shakespeare’s ‘muse’. How can my Muse want […]
An introduction to a classic revenge tragedy The Spanish Tragedy is one of the lesser-known gems among surviving Elizabethan drama – at least, it’s less well-known than the works of Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. Its influence on later plays in the ‘revenge tragedy’ genre was considerable – most notably, […]