A reading of a Shakespeare sonnet Shakespeare’s Sonnet 24 begins with the line ‘Mine eye hath played the painter and hath stell’d …’, thus picking up on two now familiar tropes from the Sonnets: the role of the eye in discerning things (see the previous sonnet) and the use of […]
A reading of a Shakespeare sonnet ‘As an unperfect actor on the stage’, the opening line of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 23, introduces one of Shakespeare’s favourite analogies – the theatrical metaphor – into the Sonnets. But the rest of the poem uses a range of comparisons and images. In this post […]
A reading of a Shakespeare sonnet We are getting into very different territory from that in which the Sonnets began, way back in that opening sonnet. ‘My glass shall not persuade me I am old’ is a world away from ‘From fairest creatures we desire increase’ in terms of its […]
A reading of a Shakespeare sonnet Sonnet 21 in Shakespeare’s Sonnets takes us further into the Bard’s world of personal feeling – specifically, his feelings for the Fair Youth. How should we interpret and analyse Shakespeare’s Sonnet 21 in terms of his clearly burgeoning affection for the Youth? So is […]
A summary of a classic Shakespeare sonnet Sonnet 20 by William Shakespeare is one of the more famous early poems, after Sonnet 18. Its opening line, ‘A woman’s face, with Nature’s own hand painted’, immediately establishes the sonnet’s theme: Shakespeare is discussing the effeminate beauty of the Fair Youth, the […]