Sonnet

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Shakespeare's Sonnets appear to allude to three characters, other than the poet: (1) an aristocratic Fair Friend; (2) a Dark Mistress and (3) a Rival Poet.

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Over 85%. There is a small scenelet at the end of Act IV Scene v (often cut) between Peter and the musicians which is in prose. The beginning of Act I Scene i up to the entrance of Montague is also in prose.

Shakespeare did not give these poems titles. When they were published, they were just given numbers in the order they were set out in that book. The Sonnets are also known by their first lines.

We are only talking about Shakespeare's sonnets here, of course. Other people are at liberty to give their sonnets titles if they want to.

The rhyme pattern of a Shakespearean sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg.

Sonnet XXX. Shakespeare's sonnets do not have titles, just numbers.

The second part of the sentence, "though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come" is an expression of a sentiment often found in the sonnets and even sometimes in the plays: beauty is fleeting. A sickle is a curved knife used for cutting grain; because it is curved into a half-circle, it is described as "bending" and having a "compass" or circular border. What this means is that Time cuts down the beauty of young lips and cheeks like someone cutting grain with a sickle, and makes them old and ugly.

But although Beauty may be defeated by Time, Shakespeare says, Love never is. Beauty may be Time's fool, but Love is not. "Love", says Shakespeare, "alters not with his brief hours and weeks". Love lasts forever.

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In this famous sonnet, Shakespeare declares that true love should overcome and outlast any obstacle. The opening two lines evoke words from the Christian church marriage service.

There is strong evidence that the Sonnets deal with the relationship between Shakespeare and his patron, Henry Wriothesley (see, for example, the link below). If this is accepted, the poem appears to be part of a sequence in which Shakespeare appeals for the forgiveness of the patron. "Don't", he says, "let the impediments of my behaviour sour our relationship".

iambic pentameter

a-b-b-a

c-d-d-c

e-f-f-e

g-g

"The Birthday of the World" was written by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Astrophel and Stella is a sonnet sequence by Sir Philip Sidney. The sequence was first published in 1591, but there is evidence the sonnets were in private circulation during the 1580's.

Many critics consider Astrophel and Stella the first sonnet sequence in English, and consider the book to have been stronly instrumental in furthering the sonnet craze of approximately 1580 - 1600.

The sequence is a series of love sonnets between Astrophel (from Greek 'Star Lover') to Stella (Latin for 'Star').

If this sonnet is read as an integral component of Sonnets 1-17, the poet's primary point of view is that of a caring friend, who is urging a beautiful, aristocratic youth to marry and get a son. He sees the youth as too short-sighted to realise that his beauty will be lost to age and death if he does not reproduce.

However, with clever use of words, Shakespeare introduces at least two more points of view. By using language appropriate to commerce and money-lending, he simultaneously conjures the image of the youth acting like a borrower who hoards his loan money and thereby achieves nothing. And by using ambiguous terms like "spend upon thyself", "abuse", "having traffic with thyself alone" and "unused beauty" he provides a teasing image of the youth wasting his semen through masturbation.

Sonnet CXXX did, yes.

A broad sheet ballad is a ballad that is often typical, humorous and subversive. They are written about current events like fires or births.

A sonnet has fourteen lines. A sonnet is like a poem.

It really rather depends on what the modern sonnet-writer is doing. A modern sonnet-writer might well adopt the rhythm, rhyme scheme and general structure of Shakespeare's sonnets. In this case, the only difference would be that they are different poems which is obvious.

Shakespeare's sonnets are filled with flatters, praises and rhetorical languages that are significant in courtly love. The fact that the addressee of Shakespeare's Sonnets is the "fair lord" a member of the same gender that Shakespeare belongs to, is where the confusion stems from regarding his sexuality. The content and the language he uses are for courtly love, yet the person whom he addresses is the "fair lord".

The rhetoric question that Shakespeare brings forth in Sonnet 18 and gives the answer himself, "Shall I compare thee to the summer's day?/ Thou art more lovely and temperate" is and expression of his love towards the addressee. He goes on comparing the "fair lord's" beauty with the days of summer and states that the latter is temporary while "Thy summer shall not fade".

In sonnet 74 too, he states the futility of his physical body and that the earth would take his body which is but earth itself but says, "My spirit is thine, the better part of me".

In Sonnet 116, he talks about the eternity of love which remains unshaken in tempests and the love that moves to the last days of the Earth, reiterating explicitly what true love really means. He goes to the extent of being expression that if he was wrong, he never wrote and no man ever loved.

All these features are the characteristics of courtly love that he expresses to the addressee, the "fair lord".

As with many of Shakespeare's sonnets, the turn comes just before the final couplet.

Hopeless love