John Milton

What is John Milton best known for?

Milton wrote poetry and prose between 1632 and 1674, and is
most famous for his epic poetry. Special Collections and
Archives holds a variety of Milton's major works, including
Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, L'Allegro, and Il Penseroso.
Paradise Lost is one of the most recognized works in English
literature.
What did John Milton wrote about?
During the English Civil War, Milton championed the cause of the
Puritans and Oliver Cromwell, and wrote a series of pamphlets
advocating radical political topics including the morality of
divorce, the freedom of the press, populism, and sanctioned
regicide
What was Milton style of writing?
Miltonic verse

Milton's most notable works, including Paradise Lost, are written

in blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter. He was not the
first to use blank verse, which had been a mainstay of English
drama since the 1561 play Gorboduc.
Why is Paradise Lost so famous?
Many scholars consider Paradise Lost to be one of the greatest
poems in the English language. It tells the biblical story of the
fall from grace of Adam and Eve (and, by extension, all
humanity) in language that is a supreme achievement of
rhythm and sound.
Summary of hundred lines….
How does the action begin in Paradise Lost book 1?
Book I of Paradise Lost begins with a prologue in which Milton
performs the traditional epic task of invoking the Muse and
stating his purpose. He invokes the classical Muse, Urania, but
also refers to her as the "Heav'nly Muse," implying the Christian
nature of this work.

The beginning of Paradise Lost is similar in gravity and seriousness to

the book from which Milton takes much of his story: the Book of
Genesis, the first book of the Bible. The Bible begins with the story of
the world’s creation, and Milton’s epic begins in a similar vein, alluding
to the creation of the world by the Holy Spirit. The first two sentences,
or twenty-six lines, of Paradise Lost are extremely compressed,
containing a great deal of information about Milton’s reasons for writing
his epic, his subject matter, and his attitudes toward his subject. In these
two sentences, Milton invokes his muse, which is actually the Holy
Spirit rather than one of the nine muses.
 The Prologue and Invocation
Milton opens Paradise Lost by formally declaring his poem’s subject:
humankind’s first act of disobedience toward God, and the consequences
that followed from it. The act is Adam and Eve’s eating of the
forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, as told in Genesis, the first
book of the Bible. In the first line, Milton refers to the outcome of Adam
and Eve’s sin as the “fruit” of the forbidden tree, punning on the actual
apple and the figurative fruits of their actions. Milton asserts that this
original sin brought death to human beings for the first time,
The speeches of Satan 
The speeches of Satan create on the mind of the readers, the impression
of his greatness and heroic nobility. In the Paradise Lost Book 1 there
are found five grand speeches delivered by Satan. His first speech goes
thus:causing us to lose our home in paradise until Jesus comes to restore
humankind to its former position of purity.
Milton’s speaker invokes the muse, a mystical source of poetic
inspiration, to sing about these subjects through him, but he makes it
clear that he refers to a different muse from the muses who traditionally
inspired classical poets by specifying that his muse inspired Moses to
receive the Ten Commandments and write Genesis. Milton’s muse is the
Holy Spirit, which inspired the Christian Bible, not one of the nine
classical muses who reside on Mount Helicon—the “Aonian mount” of
I.15. He says that his poem, like his muse, will fly above those of the
Classical poets and accomplish things never attempted before, because
his source of inspiration is greater than

theirs. Then he invokes the Holy Spirit, asking it to fill him with
knowledge of the beginning of the world, because the Holy Spirit was
the active force in creating the universe.
This is one of the most famous speeches by Satan. Satan here boldly
displays his undying hatred  for their soul enemy and his courage is
revealed to never submit or surrender. In this first
.
second speech:

      "Fallen Cherub to be weak is miserable, Doing or suffering but of

this be sure. To do ought good never will be our task.."

      Satan here addressing to Beelzebub calling him 'fallen cherub' tells

that to have a feeling of weakness means feeling miserable. Whether
they serve God's purpose or not that it is sure to do any good service to
lord will never be their task. In his third speech:

      "A mind not to be changed by time or place. The mind is its own
place and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven ........
better reign in hell then serve in heaven."
These speeches of Satan are considered as some of the most profound
speeches made by him. The mind is its own place and only once mind
has the capacity to make a heaven of hell and hell of heaven. In his
fourth speech:
       "To adore the Conqueror who now ..... beholds awake, arise or be
forever fallen."

      According to Satan to adore The Almighty shall never be their chief

in. The lord may see them rolling inside the fiery lake. But Satan bodily
announces that will never miss the opportunity to come back from Hell.
In his final speech:

      "O powers.
Matchless but with the almighty and that strife. As this place testifies,
and this dire change, hateful to utter."

      This speech by Satan is also the most encouraging speech delivered

by him to his
HomeJohn Milton

Analysis the Speeches of Satan in

Paradise Lost book 1
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
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Search Your Questions

      The speeches of Satan create on the mind of the readers, the

impression of his greatness and heroic nobility. In the Paradise
Lost Book 1 there are found five grand speeches delivered by
Satan. His first speech goes thus:
       "What though the field be lost? All is not lost, the
unconquerable will ....... tyranny of heaven"

Satan in Paradise Lost

      This is one of the most famous speeches by Satan. Satan

here boldly displays his undying hatred  for their soul enemy
and his courage is revealed to never submit or surrender. In this
first speech Satan announced they have not lost everything. His
second speech:
      "Fallen Cherub to be weak is miserable, Doing or suffering
but of this be sure. To do ought good never will be our task.."

      Satan here addressing to Beelzebub calling him 'fallen

cherub' tells that to have a feeling of weakness means feeling
miserable. Whether they serve God's purpose or not that it is
sure to do any good service to lord will never be their task. In
his third speech:

      "A mind not to be changed by time or place. The mind is its

own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of
heaven ........ better reign in hell then serve in heaven."

      These speeches of Satan are considered as some of the most

profound speeches made by him. The mind is its own place and
only once mind has the capacity to make a heaven of hell and
hell of heaven. In his fourth speech:

      "To adore the Conqueror who now ..... beholds awake, arise
or be forever fallen."

      According to Satan to adore The Almighty shall never be

their chief in. The lord may see them rolling inside the fiery
lake. But Satan bodily announces that will never miss the
opportunity to come back from Hell. In his final speech:
       "O powers.
Matchless but with the almighty and that strife. As this place
testifies, and this dire change, hateful to utter."

      This speech by Satan is also the most encouraging speech

delivered by him to his comrades. The battle with God
according to Satan did not degraded them. Though the outcome
of the battle is disasters as his approved by the horrible place
where they found themselves.

Shakespeare'
What is Shakespeare's best known for?

He wrote the blockbuster plays of his day - some of his most

famous are Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet. It has been
almost 400 years since he died, but people still celebrate his work
all around the world
 Shakespeare's will was slightly strange. ...
 One of Shakespeare's relatives was executed. ...
 Shakespeare was not an Elizabethan playwright. ...
 Shakespeare often wrote about suicide. ...
 Two of Shakespeare's plays have been translated into Klingon. ...
 Some moons were named after Shakespeare's characters.

Shakespeare's Sonnets
Shakespeare’s Sonnets are often breath-taking, sometimes
disturbing and sometimes puzzling and elusive in their meanings.
As sonnets, their main concern is ‘love’, but they also reflect upon
time, change, aging, lust, absence, infidelity and the problematic
gap between ideal and reality when it comes to the person you
love. Even after 400 years, ‘what are Shakespeare’s sonnets
about?’ and ‘how are we to read them?’ are still central and
unresolved questions.

The ‘Fair Youth’ sonnets

Sonnets 1 to 126 seem to be addressed to a young man, socially

superior to the speaker. The first 17 sonnets encourage this youth
to marry and father children, because otherwise ‘[t]hy end is
truth’s and beauty’s doom and date’ (Sonnet 14) – that is, his
beauty will die with him. After this, the sonnets diversify in their
subjects. Some erotically celebrate the ‘master mistress of my
passion’ (Sonnet 20), while others reflect upon the ‘lovely boy’
(Sonnet 126) as a cause of anguish, as the speaker desperately
wishes for his behaviour to be different to the cruelty that it
sometimes is. ‘For if you were by my unkindness shaken, / As I by
yours’, laments the speaker of Sonnet 120, ‘you have passed a
hell of time’.

The ‘Dark Lady’ sonnets

Sonnets 127 to 152 seem to be addressed to a woman, the so-

called ‘Dark Lady’ of Shakespearean legend. This woman is
elusive, often tyrannous, and causes the speaker great pain and
shame. Many of these sonnets reflect on the paradox of the ‘fair’
lady’s ‘dark’ complexion. As Sonnet 127 punningly puts it, ‘black
was not counted fair’ in Shakespeare’s era, which favoured fair
hair and light complexions. This woman’s eyes and hair are ‘raven
black’ – and yet the speaker finds her most alluring. The two final
sonnets (Sonnets 153 and 154) focus on the classical god Cupid,
and playfully detail desire and longing. They do not seem to
directly relate to the rest of the collection.
When were Shakespeare’s Sonnets composed and
published?

The sonnets were probably written, and perhaps revised, between

the early 1590s and about 1605. Versions of Sonnets 128 and
144 were printed in the poetry collection The Passionate
Pilgrim in 1599. They were first printed as a sequence in 1609,
with a mysterious dedication to ‘Mr. W.H.’ The dedication has led
to intense speculation: who is ‘W.H.’? Is he the young man of the
sonnets? As with the ‘Dark Lady’, various candidates have been
proposed, such as William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke,
and Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. No conclusive
identification has been made, and it may never be, because it is
not clear that the sonnets are even about particular historical
individuals. Moreover, since this dedication is by the printer, not
Shakespeare, and we don’t know if Shakespeare was involved in
the 1609 printing of his Sonnets, it may have no relationship to
the series of feelings, relationships and anguishes that the poems
map out.

Shakespearean sonnets

Shakespeare’s sonnets are composed of 14 lines, and most are

divided into three quatrains and a final, concluding couplet,
rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. This sonnet form and rhyme scheme
is known as the ‘English’ sonnet. It first appeared in the poetry of
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516/17–1547), who translated
Italian sonnets into English as well as composing his own. Many
later Renaissance English writers used this sonnet form, and
Shakespeare did so particularly inventively. His sonnets vary its
configurations and effects repeatedly. Shakespearean sonnets
use the alternate rhymes of each quatrain to create powerful
oppositions between different lines and different sections, or to
develop a sense of progression across the poem. The final
couplet can either provide a decisive, epigrammatic conclusion to
the narrative or argument of the rest of the sonnet, or subvert it.
Sonnet 130, for example, builds up a paradoxical picture of the
speaker’s mistress as defective in all the conventional standards
of beauty, but the final couplet remarks that, though all this is true,

And yet by heaven I think my love as rare,

As any she belied with false compare.

‘When I consider every thing that grows’ is one of one hundred and
fifty-four sonnets that Shakespeare penned. Of these, it is number
fifteen. The poem belongs to the Fair Youth sequence that lasts
from sonnet one up to sonnet 126. The series is dedicated to a
young beautiful man that the speaker deeply cared for.
This sonnet is one of seventeen that is part of the group focused
on procreation. 

Unlike the sonnets that have come before number fifteen, this one

does not directly mention procreation. Instead, it alludes to
immortality and the impossibility of gaining it. There is another
remedy that the speaker can think of for this problem aside from
having children, the written word. It is in the last lines that he
brings in this method of preserving the youth’s beauty. 

William Shakespeare

When I consider every thing that grows

Holds in perfection but a little moment,

That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows

Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;

When I perceive that men as plants increase,

Cheered and checked even by the self-same sky,

Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,

And wear their brave state out of memory;

Then the conceit of this inconstant stay

Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,

Where wasteful Time debateth with decay

To change your day of youth to sullied night,

   And all in war with Time for love of you,

   As he takes from you, I engraft you new.

When I consider every thing that grows

Holds in perfection but a little moment;
That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
Whereon the stars in secret influence commént;
In the first quatrain of ‘When I consider every thing that grows’ the speaker
begins by sharing his thoughts about growth and the brevity of life with the
Fair Youth. This young person, a man indeterminate age or identity, is quite
beautiful. Throughout the fourteen that have come before this one, the
speaker chastises him for not having children. He appears to have no desire to
“share his beauty” as the speaker would like or create a new version of himself
in his child. 

The speaker continues to appeal to the Fair Youth using the argument that
everything in the world “Holds perfection but a little moment”. Shakespeare
creates a metaphor in the next lines that present the world as a star on which
“the stars in secret influence commént”. The stars control everything in the
speaker’s version of the world. This is an allusion to heaven, fate, and God’s
creation but also to the pre-modern scientific age in which people believed
that the movements of the stars and planets could predict events. 

Lines 5-8
When I perceive that men as plants increase,
Cheerèd and checked ev’n by the self-same sky,
Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
And wear their brave state out of memory;
There is a simile at the beginning of the fifth line that compares men to plants.
They grow and are then stymied by the same sky. Life brings them to a high
point and then it also fades and allows them to collapse. Through these lines,
the speaker is trying to remind the Fair Youth that his youthful beauty is not
going to last forever. He, like all other men, is eventually going to die. 

Lines 9-12 
Th
en the conceit of this inconstant stay
Sets you, most rich in youth, before my sight,
Where wasteful time debateth with decay,
 To change your day of youth to sullied night;
The third and final quatrain presents the youth with a few more of the
speaker’s thoughts. He has also been thinking about how unstable the whole
world is. This leads him to consider the youth who has, as he has stated in
previous stanzas, been the recipient of many of nature’s gifts. 

In his mind, he can see “time” debating with “decay” over how to “change your
day of youth to sullied night”. Old age is coming for him. It’s a force that can’t
be stopped. Shakespeare personifies “time” and “decay” by giving them the
ability to made decisions as if they are human beings. 

Lines 13-14
    And all in war with time for love of you,
As he takes from you, I engraft you new
In the last two lines of Sonnet 15: When I consider every thing that grows, there
is a connection to the next series of sonnets, those that have to do with the
immortality of the written word. The speaker tells the youth that he is in a
constant battle with time. It is waged through the written word. When time
takes away the speaker recreates the youth through these poems. This is
another way, aside from having a child, that the youth might gain immortality.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (Sonnet 18)

William Shakespeare - 1564-1616


 Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
    So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

 Shall I compare thee to a summer's day explanation?


 In the sonnet, the speaker asks whether he should compare the Fair Youth
to a summer's day, but notes that he has qualities that surpass a summer's
day. He also notes the qualities of a summer day are subject to change and will
eventually diminish.
Summary: Sonnet 18
The speaker opens the poem with a question addressed to the beloved: “Shall I compare thee to a
summer’s day?” The next eleven lines are devoted to such a comparison. In line 2, the speaker
stipulates what mainly differentiates the young man from the summer’s day: he is “more lovely
and more temperate.” Summer’s days tend toward extremes: they are shaken by “rough winds”;
in them, the sun (“the eye of heaven”) often shines “too hot,” or too dim. And summer is
fleeting: its date is too short, and it leads to the withering of autumn, as “every fair from fair
sometime declines.” The final quatrain of the sonnet tells how the beloved differs from the
summer in that respect: his beauty will last forever (“Thy eternal summer shall not fade...”) and
never die. In the couplet, the speaker explains how the beloved’s beauty will accomplish this
feat, and not perish because it is preserved in the poem, which will last forever; it will live “as
long as men can breathe or eyes can see.”

Analysis
This sonnet is certainly the most famous in the sequence of Shakespeare’s sonnets; it may be the
most famous lyric poem in English. Among Shakespeare’s works, only lines such as “To be or
not to be” and “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” are better-known. This is not to say
that it is at all the best or most interesting or most beautiful of the sonnets; but the simplicity and
loveliness of its praise of the beloved has guaranteed its place.

On the surface, the poem is simply a statement of praise about the beauty of the beloved;
summer tends to unpleasant extremes of windiness and heat, but the beloved is always mild and
temperate. Summer is incidentally personified as the “eye of heaven” with its “gold
complexion”; the imagery throughout is simple and unaffected, with the “darling buds of May”
giving way to the “eternal summer”, which the speaker promises the beloved. The language, too,
is comparatively unadorned for the sonnets; it is not heavy with alliteration or assonance, and
nearly every line is its own self-contained clause—almost every line ends with some
punctuation, which effects a pause.

‘Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,

‘Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,’ or Sonnet 27, by William Shakespeare

was published in 1609 in the collection, Shakespeare’s Sonnets. It is one of 154
the poet and playwright penned in his lifetime. It is also included in a specific
section of the collection, which is referred to as the Fair Youth group. Within
these five poems, the speaker muses on a beautiful young man he clearly
adores, but is far away from. 

Sonnet 27

William Shakespeare

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,

The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;

But then begins a journey in my head

To work my mind, when body's work's expired:

For then my thoughts--from far where I abide—

Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,

And keep my drooping eyelids open wide

,Looking on darkness which the blind do see

:Save that my soul's imaginary sight

Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,

Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,Makes black night beauteous, and her old
face new.  

 Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,   

For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.

Detailed Analysis
Lines 1-4
Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head, 
To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired:
In the first lines of ‘Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed’ the speaker begins
by stating that he is “Weary”. He has been engaged in some kind of unknown
“toil” and is now ready for bed. He is hastening there, moving as quickly as
possible. The speaker is seeking out a place where he can rest, and his bed is
going to provide just that. His “travel tired” limbs need “repose.” This line
gives the reader a little more detail, but still, it is unclear if he has been doing
physical or mental labor, or maybe both.  

When the speaker finally makes it to his bed, there is another journey he has
to embark on. It is a mental one that he can’t escape from. Now that his body
is resting, his mind is able to work in a different way.  
Lines 5-8 
For then my thoughts (from far where I abide) 
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee, 
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide, 
Looking on darkness which the blind do see: 
The next quatrain explains the situation to the reader. The poem shifts into
the second person, and the young man, known as the Fair Youth in other
poems, is spoken to directly. From prior knowledge of the sonnet and the
group to which it belongs, a reader might already know that four other poems
are dedicated to this mysterious person. Together, they form a loose narrative
about the speaker’s emotional connection to the man.

Just as his body may have worked during the day, now his mind is forced to
make a “pilgrimage to thee”. It is a long journey as the young man is
somewhere far from where the speaker lives. This is something he wishes he
could change, but at this point, all he can do is mourn for a change in their
relationship. 

At beginning of the poem the speaker was exhausted, now that his mind has
embarked on the journey he is wide awake. His eyes stare off into the
darkness, seeing as a blind person would.

Lines 9-12
Save that my soul’s imaginary sight 
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night, 
Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.

In the final quatrain of ‘Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed’ the speaker adds
that the darkness in his room does not exist in his mind. There are “imaginary
sights” in his “sightless view”. These are images of the young man and they
come straight from the speaker’s soul. He describes the image he sees as a
“jewel hung in a ghastly night”. The speaker is worried about the darkness
around him, and around the image, but the young man breaks through that
worry and brings him pleasure. 

The blackness of the night is usually ugly to this speaker. He tells the young
man that his imaginary presence there makes it “beauteous” instead. He also
influences “her old face,” or the face of the night. “She,” or nighttime, is no
longer old-looking. She is rejuvenated. 

Lines 13-14
   Lo, thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.
As is common in Shakespeare’s poems, the last two lines are a rhyming pair,
known as a couplet. They often bring with them a turn or volta. They’re
sometimes used to answer a question posed in the previous twelve lines, shift
the perspective, or even change speakers. 

In this case, the speaker adds that because of the young man, his body is
unable to rest during the day or at night. This adds context to the first lines. It
suggests that the only reason the speaker was so tired in the evening was that
he’d spent the whole day thinking about the young man.  
Sonnet 34 by William
Shakespeare
Read Shakespeare’s Sonnet 34, ‘Why didst thou promise such a beauteous
day,’ with a summary and complete analysis of the poem.

‘Sonnet 34,’ also known as ‘Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,’ is

number thirty-four of 154 sonnets that Shakespeare wrote. It is part of the Fair
Youth sequence, numbers one through one hundred twenty-six.

This sonnet is part of a short sequence that is generally referred to as the

estrangement sonnets. They last from sonnet 33 to 36. They are all concerned
with the speaker responding to something unknown, but related to
relationships, love, and sex, that the Fair Youth did.

Sonnet 34

William Shakespeare

Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,

And make me travel forth without my cloak,

To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,

Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?

'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,

To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,

For no man well of such a salve can speak,

That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace:

Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;

Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss:

The offender's sorrow lends but weak relief

To him that bears the strong offence's cross.

   Ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,

   And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds.

Detailed Analysis
Lines 1-4 
Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day
And make me travel forth without my cloak,
To let base clouds o’ertake me in my way,
Hiding thy brav’ry in their rotten smoke?
In the first lines of ‘Sonnet 34,’ the speaker begins by asking the Fair Youth
a rhetorical question. While he appears to be addressing the sun, he is in fact
talking to this beautiful young man who is in this series of sonnets equated to
the sun. He asks the youth/the sun why it made the weather appear to be
beautiful today. The speaker took the weather at face value and went outside
“without [his] cloak”. This ended up being a mistake because the “base
clouds,” a phrase which appeared in ‘Sonnet 33,’ overtook him. These terrible
and nasty clouds came out and hid the sun. Their “rotten smoke” was all the
speaker could see. 

Lines 5-8 
‘Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face.
For no man well of such a salve can speak
That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace.
In the next quatrain of ‘Sonnet 34,’ the speaker adds that obviously, it was not
enough that the sun eventually returned and dried the rain from his “storm-
beaten face”. The original act is still painful to him. “No man,” he says, can
speak well of such a “salve”. It does not heal the wounds or “cure” the
“disgrace” that previously befell him. 

Lines 9-14 
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss.
The offender’s sorrow lends but weak relief
To him that bears the strong offense’s cross.
Ah, but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,
And they are rich, and ransom all ill deeds.
In the last quatrain of the sonnet, the speaker says that it
does not comfort him that the sun/youth is ashamed of his
sinful actions. It makes no difference because the speaker
has still lost something. The “offender’s sorrow lends but
weak relief,” he says. 

In the last two lines of the poem the speaker transitions

into a new way of thinking. This is known as the turn or
volta. Despite his anger and frustration at the Fair Youth
for whatever unnamed sin he committed, he can’t stay
mad at him. When he sees the young man cry his tears are
like pearls to him. They are pearls of love shed in sorrow
for the speaker. They are so valuable to the speaker that
they make up for all the youth’s “ill deeds”

A summary of Shakespeare’s 42nd sonnet

William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 42 doesn’t exactly provide the

answer to the question of life, the universe and everything –
nor is it the finest sonnet in Shakespeare’s Sonnets. But it’s
nevertheless interesting in the sequence because of the
further light it sheds on the romantic drama unfolding
between Shakespeare, the Fair Youth, and the Bard’s mistress
(who, for those of you who’ve just come in at this point, has
been sleeping with the Fair Youth, it would seem).

That thou hast her it is not all my grief,

And yet it may be said I loved her dearly;
That she hath thee is of my wailing chief,
A loss in love that touches me more nearly.
Loving offenders thus I will excuse ye:
Thou dost love her, because thou know’st I love her;
And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,
Suffering my friend for my sake to approve her.
If I lose thee, my loss is my love’s gain,
And losing her, my friend hath found that loss;
Both find each other, and I lose both twain,
And both for my sake lay on me this cross:

But here’s the joy; my friend and I are one;

Sweet flattery! then she loves but me alone.
LITERATURE

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s

Sonnet 42: ‘That thou hast her it
is not all my grief’
A summary of Shakespeare’s 42nd sonnet

William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 42 doesn’t exactly provide the answer to the question of life, the
universe and everything – nor is it the finest sonnet in Shakespeare’s Sonnets. But it’s
nevertheless interesting in the sequence because of the further light it sheds on the romantic
drama unfolding between Shakespeare, the Fair Youth, and the Bard’s mistress (who, for those
of you who’ve just come in at this point, has been sleeping with the Fair Youth, it would seem).

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That thou hast her it is not all my grief,

And yet it may be said I loved her dearly;
That she hath thee is of my wailing chief,
A loss in love that touches me more nearly.
Loving offenders thus I will excuse ye:
Thou dost love her, because thou know’st I love her;
And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,
Suffering my friend for my sake to approve her.
If I lose thee, my loss is my love’s gain,
And losing her, my friend hath found that loss;
Both find each other, and I lose both twain,
And both for my sake lay on me this cross:
But here’s the joy; my friend and I are one;
Sweet flattery! then she loves but me alone.

Sonnet 42 sees Shakespeare trying to console himself over the fact that the Fair Youth has been
unfaithful to him with his mistress. The situation may not be familiar to us, but the feeling of
being in love is one we can all identify with – especially when Shakespeare convinces himself
that the Youth’s selfish actions are actually designed to flatter him.

We might paraphrase the content of Sonnet 42 as follows: ‘The fact that you’ve been with my
mistress is not the most upsetting thing, even though I did love her very much. No: the worst
thing is that she had you, and that’s the loss – my loss of you and your affection – that really
hurts.

So I forgive you two who, through making love with each

other, offended me; you love her, because you know I love her,
and she puts up with your affections because she knows I
love you. So it’s for my sake that she endures having you, my
friend, sleep with her (“approve her”). If I lose you, my loss is
her gain (for she will gain you), and losing her means that you,
my friend, have found her instead; the two of you find each
other, and I lose you both, and you’re both doing this so that I
might suffer. But I won’t despair, because you and I are one,
my friend – and so actually, she loves only me, since you and I
are the same!’

This is a neat bit of verbal jiggery-pokery, and the play on ‘lost’

and ‘found’ is a nice conceit – though the end of the poem
becomes out-and-out conceited. But Shakespeare appears to
be enacting a version of the lover’s complaint, and trying to
console himself over the fact that the two people he loves
have been untrue to him, so we can forgive him, just as he
forgives those who trespass against him (that religious
allusion was inspired by Shakespeare’s own use of the word
‘cross’ in this sonnet).

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s

Sonnet 40: ‘Take all my loves, my
love, yea take them all’
A summary and paraphrase of Shakespeare’s 40th sonnet

Of all Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Sonnet 40 is perhaps the most

relentlessly focused on ‘love’: the word itself recurs ten times
in the sonnet’s fourteen lines, including twice in the poem’s
opening line: ‘Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all’. In
the following analysis, we’re going to examine how
Shakespeare’s

relationship with the Fair Youth has changed by the

40th sonnet in the sequence.
LITERATURE
A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s
Sonnet 40: ‘Take all my loves, my
love, yea take them all’
A summary and paraphrase of Shakespeare’s 40th sonnet

Of all Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Sonnet 40 is perhaps the most relentlessly focused on ‘love’: the
word itself recurs ten times in the sonnet’s fourteen lines, including twice in the poem’s opening
line: ‘Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all’. In the following analysis, we’re going to
examine how Shakespeare’s relationship with the Fair Youth has changed by the 40th sonnet in
the sequence.

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Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all;

What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;
All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more.
Then, if for my love, thou my love receivest,
I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest;
But yet be blam’d, if thou thy self deceivest
By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.
I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,
Although thou steal thee all my poverty:
And yet, love knows it is a greater grief
To bear love’s wrong, than hate’s known injury.

Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,

Kill me with spites yet we must not be foes.
The best way to summarise a Shakespeare sonnet is, perhaps,
to paraphrase it. But first, a brief summary of the poem’s
background: it would appear that Shakespeare has a mistress,
and that the Fair Youth has gone to bed

with  her. What we have, then, is

a bizarre love triangle involving Shakespeare, the Fair Youth,
and Shakespeare’s mistress who has been unfaithful to
Shakespeare by lying with the Youth. (Later in the Sonnets, it
will emerge that this mistress is the figure known as the ‘Dark
Lady’.) So, to aparaphrase of the sonnet’s meaning:

‘Take everyone I love – no, go on, really, take them. But by

going with them, what do you have that you didn’t already
have? No love that can be called true, that’s for sure. All my
love was yours, until you went with my mistress. Then if, in
exchange for my love, you received the affections of my
mistress, I can’t say I blame you, for you used my lover;
however, if you’ve tricked yourself into thinking that by
sleeping with my mistress you are tasting what you are
refusing to enjoy. I forgive you for stealing from me the little I
possess (i.e. my mistress), even though it’s much harder to
bear the wrong done to you by the one you love, than it is to
bear the harm done by an enemy. Even when doing wrong you
somehow make evil look good, so kill me with your bad
behaviour, I don’t mind – we must not become enemies.’

That (we hope) makes the poem’s meaning a little clearer,

though the following lines remain something of a challenge
for the literary critic:

But yet be blam’d, if thou thy self deceivest

By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.

Is this an oblique reference to the idea of the Fair Youth, who

is not having sex with Shakespeare but is having it off with
Shakespeare’s mistress, ‘tasting’ Shakespeare on the Dark
Lady? Is it too much to say there’s a faint penile pun in ‘wilful’
– i.e. not just ‘full of Will’ (Shakespeare), but full of willy?
Perhaps.

In short, Sonnet 40 is a rather long-drawn-out (some would

say laboured) play on the double meaning of the phrase ‘my
love’. Or rather, not so much double meaning as triple: 1) ‘my
love’ as a term of endearment towards the Fair Youth; 2) ‘my
love’ as a quality or feeling (e.g. ‘my love for you’); and 3) ‘my
love’ as in my lover (who is not you). The first two of these
senses is played upon in the sonnet’s opening line: ‘Take all
my loves, my love’, i.e. ‘Take all of my lovers, m’dear…’ The
third sense is present when Shakespeare says, in line 5, ‘Then,
 if for my love, thou my love receivest’, i.e. ‘if in exchange
for my love for you you received my lover’. How much one
enjoys this stuff depends greatly on how much one
appreciates frequent punning in a supposedly sincere love
poem, we suppose.

If you found this analysis of Sonnet 40 useful, you can discover

more about Shakespeare’s Sonnets here.

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 A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 41: ‘Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits’

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 44: ‘If the dull substance of my flesh were thought’

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 52: ‘So am I as the rich, whose blessed key’

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2. J. Alfred Prufrock

May 30, 2017 at 11:33 am

State of my mind today 

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LITERATURE

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s

Sonnet 40: ‘Take all my loves, my
love, yea take them all’
A summary and paraphrase of Shakespeare’s 40th sonnet

Of all Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Sonnet 40 is perhaps the most relentlessly focused on ‘love’: the
word itself recurs ten times in the sonnet’s fourteen lines, including twice in the poem’s opening
line: ‘Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all’. In the following analysis, we’re going to
examine how Shakespeare’s relationship with the Fair Youth has changed by the 40th sonnet in
the sequence.

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Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all;

What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;
All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more.
Then, if for my love, thou my love receivest,
I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest;
But yet be blam’d, if thou thy self deceivest
By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.
I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,
Although thou steal thee all my poverty:
And yet, love knows it is a greater grief
To bear love’s wrong, than hate’s known injury.
Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,
Kill me with spites yet we must not be foes.

The best way to summarise a Shakespeare sonnet is, perhaps, to paraphrase it. But first, a brief
summary of the poem’s background: it would appear that Shakespeare has a mistress, and that

the Fair Youth has gone to bed with  her. What we

have, then, is a bizarre love triangle involving Shakespeare, the Fair Youth, and Shakespeare’s
mistress who has been unfaithful to Shakespeare by lying with the Youth. (Later in the Sonnets,
it will emerge that this mistress is the figure known as the ‘Dark Lady’.) So, to a paraphrase of
the sonnet’s meaning:

‘Take everyone I love – no, go on, really, take them. But by going with them, what do you have
that you didn’t already have? No love that can be called true, that’s for sure. All my love was
yours, until you went with my mistress. Then if, in exchange for my love, you received the
affections of my mistress, I can’t say I blame you, for you used my lover; however, if you’ve
tricked yourself into thinking that by sleeping with my mistress you are tasting what you are
refusing to enjoy. I forgive you for stealing from me the little I possess (i.e. my mistress), even
though it’s much harder to bear the wrong done to you by the one you love, than it is to bear the
harm done by an enemy. Even when doing wrong you somehow make evil look good, so kill me
with your bad behaviour, I don’t mind – we must not become enemies.’

That (we hope) makes the poem’s meaning a little clearer, though the following lines remain
something of a challenge for the literary critic:

But yet be blam’d, if thou thy self deceivest

By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.

Is this an oblique reference to the idea of the Fair Youth, who is not having sex with Shakespeare
but is having it off with Shakespeare’s mistress, ‘tasting’ Shakespeare on the Dark Lady? Is it
too much to say there’s a faint penile pun in ‘wilful’ – i.e. not just ‘full of Will’ (Shakespeare),
but full of willy? Perhaps.

In short, Sonnet 40 is a rather long-drawn-out (some would say laboured) play on the double
meaning of the phrase ‘my love’. Or rather, not so much double meaning as triple: 1) ‘my love’
as a term of endearment towards the Fair Youth; 2)

my love’ as a quality or feeling (e.g. ‘my love for you’); and 3)

‘my love’ as in my lover (who is not you). The first two of these
senses is played upon in the sonnet’s opening line: ‘Take all
my loves, my love’, i.e. ‘Take all of my lovers, m’dear…’ The
third sense is present when Shakespeare says, in line 5, ‘Then,
if for my love, thou my love receivest’, i.e. ‘if in exchange
for my love for you you received my lover’. How much one
enjoys this stuff depends greatly on how much one
appreciates frequent punning in a supposedly sincere love
poem, we suppose.
53: ‘What is your substance,
whereof are you made’
A summary of Shakespeare’s 53rd sonnet

‘What is your substance, whereof are you made, / That

millions of strange shadows on you tend?’ Sonnet 53 is pored
over and analysed by Cyril Graham in Oscar Wilde’s brilliant
short story ‘The Portrait of Mr W. H.’ (1889), about a man who
thinks he’s discovered the identity of the mysterious
dedicatee of the 1609 edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets.
Believing ‘Mr W. H.’ to be a boy-actor named Willie Hughes,
Wilde’s protagonist cites this sonnet as part of his internal
evidence: the ‘strange shadows’ are the various roles played
by the actor on the

Elizabethan stage. Unfortunately, there’s no evidence such an

actor as Willie Hughes ever existed. Nevertheless, this makes
Sonnet 53 immediately interesting – but as closer analysis
reveals, we don’t need any high-flown theories or
interpretations to find this sonnet of interest.

What is your substance, whereof are you made,

That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
Since every one hath, every one, one shade,
And you but one, can every shadow lend.
Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit
Is poorly imitated after you;
On Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set,
And you in Grecian tires are painted new:
Speak of the spring, and foison of the year,
The one doth shadow of your beauty show,
The other as your bounty doth appear;
And you in every blessed shape we know.
In all external grace you have some part,
But you like none, none you, for constant heart.

First, a brief paraphrase of Sonnet 53: ‘What is your real

essence, the material of which you are made, that millions of
strange images and illusions surround you? This is baffling,
since everyone, each person, has one shadow, and you,
although you’re only one person, can accommodate every one
of these millions of shadows. Describe Adonis, the beautiful
youth of classical mythology, and the portrait you create is a
poor imitation of your beauty. Paint the best portrait of Helen
of Troy (whose beauty caused the Trojan War of Greek myth),
and it’s merely a Greek rendering of you and your beauty.
Speak of the spring or the rich harvest (“foison”), and the
spring is a mere echo of your beauty, and the harvest just calls
to mind your bountiful beauty; we recognise you in every
beautiful thing. You are present in every artistic depiction of
beauty, but none can match you for constancy of heart.’
Sonnet 53 is often analysed in terms of Renaissance
Neoplatonism, the belief that everything is divided into a
‘substance’ and a ‘shadow’: in short, nothing we perceive is
actually reality, because the physical and literal substance of
everything is subsumed beneath seemings and ‘shadows’
which hide a thing’s true reality from us. (This isn’t quite the
Elizabethan version of ‘perhaps we all live in the Matrix’, but it
is a rough approximation.) Stephen Booth, in
his Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Yale Nota Bene), summarises the
relationship between Shakespeare’s Sonnet 53 and
Neoplatonism much more effectively, when he writes:
‘Shakespeare here takes the Platonic idea of beauty and
works his own paradoxes upon it; the poem is a hyperbolic
compliment in which the beloved, an instance
of embodied beauty, is said to be the form, the idea, the
substance from which all other particular beautiful things
derive.’
LITERATURE

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s

Sonnet 53: ‘What is your
substance, whereof are you made’
A summary of Shakespeare’s 53rd sonnet

‘What is your substance, whereof are you made, / That millions of strange shadows on you
tend?’ Sonnet 53 is pored over and analysed by Cyril Graham in Oscar Wilde’s brilliant short
story ‘The Portrait of Mr W. H.’ (1889), about a man who thinks he’s discovered the identity of
the mysterious dedicatee of the 1609 edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Believing ‘Mr W. H.’ to
be a boy-actor named Willie Hughes, Wilde’s protagonist cites this sonnet as part of his internal
evidence: the ‘strange shadows’ are the various roles played by the actor on the Elizabethan
stage. Unfortunately, there’s no evidence such an actor as Willie Hughes ever existed.
Nevertheless, this makes Sonnet 53 immediately interesting – but as closer analysis reveals, we
don’t need any high-flown theories or interpretations to find this sonnet of interest.

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What is your substance, whereof are you made,

That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
Since every one hath, every one, one shade,
And you but one, can every shadow lend.
Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit
Is poorly imitated after you;
On Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set,
And you in Grecian tires are painted new:
Speak of the spring, and foison of the year,
The one doth shadow of your beauty show,
The other as your bounty doth appear;
And you in every blessed shape we know.
In all external grace you have some part,
But you like none, none you, for constant heart.

First, a brief paraphrase of Sonnet 53: ‘What is your real essence, the material of which you are
made, that millions of strange images and illusions surround you? This is baffling, since
everyone, each person, has one shadow, and you, although you’re only one person, can
accommodate every one of these millions of shadows. Describe Adonis, the beautiful youth of
classical mythology, and the portrait you create is a poor imitation of your beauty. Paint the best
portrait of Helen of Troy (whose beauty caused the Trojan War of Greek myth), and it’s merely a
Greek rendering of you and your beauty. Speak of the spring or the rich harvest (“foison”), and
the spring is a mere  echo of your beauty, and the
harvest just calls to mind your bountiful beauty; we recognise you in every beautiful thing. You
are present in every artistic depiction of beauty, but none can match you for constancy of heart.’

Sonnet 53 is often analysed in terms of Renaissance Neoplatonism, the belief that everything is
divided into a ‘substance’ and a ‘shadow’: in short, nothing we perceive is actually reality,
because the physical and literal substance of everything is subsumed beneath seemings and
‘shadows’ which hide a thing’s true reality from us. (This isn’t quite the Elizabethan version of
‘perhaps we all live in the Matrix’, but it is a rough approximation.) Stephen Booth, in
his Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Yale Nota Bene), summarises the relationship between
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 53 and Neoplatonism much more effectively, when he writes:
‘Shakespeare here takes the Platonic idea of beauty and works his own paradoxes upon it; the
poem is a hyperbolic compliment in which the beloved, an instance of embodied beauty, is said
to be the form, the idea, the substance from which all other particular beautiful things derive.’

One wonders whether the beautiful archetypes which Shakespeare mentions in this sonnet –
Adonis and Helen of Troy – are meant to tell us something about Shakespeare’s attitude to the
Fair Youth. True, they are arguably the two most readily recognisable short-hands for ‘beauty’ in
the classical world; but then why choose one male and one female? To show that the Fair
Youth’s beauty sets the tone for all human beauty, perhaps. But one can see why Wilde, in ‘The
Portrait of Mr W. H.’, draws on this sonnet and on Sonnet 20, with its opening line ‘A woman’s
face, with nature’s own hand painted’. There’s a certain androgyny implicit in Shakespeare’s
depiction of the Fair Youth in Sonnet 53: Adonis is associated with fertility and spring (his blood
supposedly watered the earth every year, allowing crops to flourish; this neatly links the second
quatrain of Shakespeare’s sonnet to the third quatrain, with its talk of spring but also

harvest), while Helen of Troy casts the Fair Youth as a cross-

dresser, much like the boy-actors in Elizabethan playhouses
(again, whilst we aren’t convinced by the interpretation of
Sonnet 53 put forward in Wilde’s story, the argument is
 nevertheless interesting, though lacking any external
evidence). But the main point to take from this is that
Shakespeare, back to complimenting the Fair Youth, heaps
abundant praise on his beauty by drawing comparisons
between his natural grace and the poor imitations of beauty
that art can provide.
O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem (Sonnet 54)
William Shakespeare - 1564-1616

O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem

By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hand on such thorns and play as wantonly
When summer’s breath their masked buds discloses:
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo’d and unrespected fade,
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:
    And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
    When that shall fade, my verse distills your truth.

‘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. Before we offer some words of analysis,
here’s a reminder of Sonnet 54:
LITERATURE

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s

Sonnet 54: ‘O how much more
doth beauty beauteous seem’
‘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.
Before we offer some words of analysis, here’s a reminder of Sonnet 54:

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O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem,

By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns and play as wantonly
When summer’s breath their masked buds discloses:
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo’d and unrespected fade,
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall fade, my verse distills your truth.
Let’s begin with a brief summary of Sonnet 54. ‘O how much more doth beauty beauteous
seem / By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!’ In other words, ‘Beautiful people who are
beautiful on the inside as well as outside are much more beautiful than those whose

beauty  is merely on the outside.’

Shakespeare is addressing the Fair Youth, the blond-haired young man who is the subject and
addressee of the majority of the Sonnets. He is praising the young man for being physically
attractive but also having a nice personality, if you will.

In the third and fourth lines of the sonnet, Shakespeare uses

the example of the rose: the rose is praised for its beauty –
it looks pretty – but we also like it because it smells sweet too.
So it is with people: if they’re physically attractive but their
personality stinks, they seem less attractive to us all of a
sudden.

In the second and third quatrains, lines 5-12, Shakespeare

moves to contrast the rose with the ‘canker’ (or dog-rose),
which has the same outward appearance (‘dye’ and ‘tincture’)
as the bona fide rose, and behaves the same (playing
‘wantonly’ in the summer breeze), but their ‘show’ benefits
themselves only, and not others. They die alone. But
the sweet roses are sweet even when they die, releasing a
sweet perfume into the world.

In the concluding couplet of the sonnet, Shakespeare

explicitly likens the Fair Youth to the sweet-smelling rose,
promising him that when the young man dies, Shakespeare’s
verse will ‘distill’ his ‘truth’ or essence, much as the rose’s
scent is released into the world when it dies.

‘O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem’ expresses a

fairly straightforward idea: that inward worth or value
enhances outward beauty. The comparison with the rose and
the ‘canker’ is a neat analogy for the Fair Youth’s superiority to
another attractive young man (represented by the canker rose
in the poem), while the idea of the rose’s scent being able to
live on after it dies provides the Bard with another opportunity
to riff on his ‘my poetry will make you immortal’ idea, which
he had already made much use of earlier in the Sonnets.

Of course, putting these two aspects of the sonnet together

does lead us to a further conclusion: that poets want to
immortalise people of substance, rather than mere airheads
who look pretty, in their work. The inward ‘truth’ or worth of a
poet’s human muse is what will inspire them to write great
work. Pretty verses celebrating prettiness alone are just that:
pretty, but ultimately vacuous.
 
