Summary Most of Sonnet 23 compares the poet’s role as a lover to an actor’s timidity onstage. The image of the poor theatrical player nervously missing his lines is the first indication that the poet doubts whether his love for the young man is requited. The first two lines of […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 23Summary and Analysis Sonnet 22
Summary Until now, the poet’s feelings have soared to the level of rapture; in Sonnet 22, he suggests — perhaps deluding himself — that his affections are being returned by the youth. He declares that the youth’s beauty “Is but the seemly raiment of my heart, / Which in thy […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 22Summary and Analysis Sonnet 21
Summary Having explored the nature of his and the young man’s relationship in the previous sonnet, the poet now returns to his theme of immortality. Not only does he grant the youth immortality through his verse, but because the poet’s enduring love is repeatedly stressed as well, the poet himself […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 21Summary and Analysis Sonnet 20
Summary In this crucial, sensual sonnet, the young man becomes the “master-mistress” of the poet’s passion. The young man’s double nature and character, however, present a problem of description: Although to the poet he possesses a woman’s gentleness and charm, the youth bears the genitalia (“one thing”) of a man, […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 20Summary and Analysis Sonnet 19
Summary In Sonnet 19, the poet addresses Time and, using vivid animal imagery, comments on Time’s normal effects on nature. The poet then commands Time not to age the young man and ends by boldly asserting that the poet’s own creative talent will make the youth permanently young and beautiful. […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 19Summary and Analysis Sonnet 18
Summary One of the best known of Shakespeare’s sonnets, Sonnet 18 is memorable for the skillful and varied presentation of subject matter, in which the poet’s feelings reach a level of rapture unseen in the previous sonnets. The poet here abandons his quest for the youth to have a child, […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 18Summary and Analysis Sonnet 17
Summary In the earlier sonnets, the poet’s main concern was to persuade the youth to marry and reproduce his beauty in the creation of a child. That purpose changes here in Sonnet 17, in which the poet fears that his praise will be remembered merely as a “poet’s rage” that […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 17Summary and Analysis Sonnet 16
Summary Sonnet 16 continues the arguments for the youth to marry and at the same time now disparages the poet’s own poetic labors, for the poet concedes that children will ensure the young man immortality more surely than will his verses because neither verse nor painting can provide a true […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 16Summary and Analysis Sonnet 15
Summary In Sonnet 15’s first eight lines, the poet surveys how objects mutate — decay — over time: “. . . every thing that grows / Holds in perfection but a little moment.” In other words, life is transitory and ever-changing. Even the youth’s beauty will fade over time, but […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 15Summary and Analysis Sonnet 14
Summary Sonnet 13 depends on an intimate relationship between the poet and the young man that is symbolized in the use of the more affectionate “you”; Sonnet 14 discards — at least temporarily — this intimate “you” and focuses on the poet’s own stake in the relationship between the two […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 14