By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem’: so begins the 54th sonnet in Shakespeare’s sequence of 154 poems. It’s not the most famous poem in the sequence by any means, and the sentiment it expresses is straightforward – perhaps to the point of being rather slight.
But not all sonnets have to tie themselves up in knots with metaphysical conceits and complex metaphors.