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 […]
A critical reading of a Shakespeare sonnet 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 […]
A critical reading of a Shakespeare sonnet 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 […]
A critical reading of a Shakespeare sonnet ‘From fairest creatures we desire increase’: so begins Sonnet 1 in Shakespeare’s Sonnets. This opening sonnet is all about procreation, but also, perhaps, sexual pleasure (including solitary sexual pleasure – about which we say more below). For the next 154 weeks (or nearly […]