Shakespeare – Page 5 – Interesting Literature

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 8: ‘Music to hear’

A reading of a Shakespeare sonnet

We swap the visual imagery of the previous sonnet for a musical theme in Sonnet 8, as the opening line (‘Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?’) makes clear. What follows is a short summary and analysis of Sonnet 8 in terms of its language and meaning.

Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:
Why lov’st thou that which thou receiv’st not gladly,
Or else receiv’st with pleasure thine annoy?
If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,
By unions married, do offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 7: ‘Lo, in the orient’

A critical reading of a Shakespeare sonnet

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 7 uses the image of the sun rising and then falling in the sky as a metaphor for the Fair Youth’s own life, beginning ‘Lo, in the orient when the gracious light / Lifts up his burning head’ in reference to the sunrise. Below is Sonnet 7, along with our analysis of the poem’s meaning and imagery, and a brief paraphrase and summary of it.

Lo, in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
Serving with looks his sacred majesty;
And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill,
Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
Attending on his golden pilgrimage:

Five Fascinating Facts about Christopher Marlowe

Curious trivia about playwright Christopher Marlowe

1. Christopher Marlowe was a pioneer of the Elizabethan theatre. He influenced Shakespeare, and Shakespeare’s biographer Jonathan Bate has even suggested that Marlowe and Shakespeare became locked in a competition, where each influenced the other. Marlowe was just two months older than Shakespeare: he was born in Canterbury in February 1564, the son of a shoemaker. Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great (part one of a two-parter) is thought to be one of the first English plays written in blank verse – that is, unrhymed iambic pentameter.

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 6: ‘Then let not winter’s ragged hand’

A critical reading of a Shakespeare sonnet

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 6, which begins ‘Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface / In thee thy summer’, is not the most famous of the 154 Sonnets Shakespeare wrote. And yet it develops the theme of procreation – seen in the first 17 poems in the sequence – in interesting ways. Here is Sonnet 6, along with a brief analysis of its language and a summary of its argument.

Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface,
In thee thy summer, ere thou be distilled:
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place
With beauty’s treasure ere it be self-killed.
That use is not forbidden usury,
Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
That’s for thy self to breed another thee,
Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 5: ‘Those hours, that with gentle work’

A critical reading of a Shakespeare sonnet

Sonnet 5 in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, which begins ‘Those hours, that with gentle work did frame …’ is another ‘Procreation Sonnet’ – many of these sonnets might also be described as carpe diem or ‘seize the day’ poems. A brief analysis of Sonnet 5 follows below. In the poem, Shakespeare once again urges the Fair Youth to have children, because time, which has helped to fashion his beauty, will also rob him of it.

Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter, and confounds him there;
Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o’er-snowed and bareness every where: