Shakespeare’s Sonnets – Page 13 – Interesting Literature

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

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

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:

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 4: ‘Unthrifty loveliness’

A critical reading of a Shakespeare sonnet

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 4 sees the Bard analysing the Fair Youth’s refusal to have children from a slightly different perspective, using the metaphor of economic and financial activity. In what follows, we analyse Sonnet 4 (‘Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend …’) in terms of its images of money and spending, as a way of elucidating its meaning.

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thy self thy beauty’s legacy?
Nature’s bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,
And being frank she lends to those are free:
Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?

A Summary and Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 3

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Sonnet 3 in Shakespeare’s sonnet continues the Bard’s attempts to persuade the Fair Youth to marry and sire an heir. This time, Shakespeare uses the image of the Youth’s reflection in a mirror to make his point: ‘Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest …’

What follows is, as with so many of Shakespeare’s sonnets, an argument, or analysis of the situation, set out in fourteen iambic pentameter lines. Below is our analysis of Sonnet 3, along with a summary of the poem’s argument.

A Summary and Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 2

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The Shakespeare sonnet that begins ‘When forty winters shall besiege thy brow’ is sonnet 2 of 154, and the second in a series of ‘Procreation Sonnets’. It’s a poem about ageing, and about the benefits of having children – continuing the argument begun in the previous sonnet. Below is Sonnet 2, and a few words of summary and analysis.