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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]