Strategies for Reading Shakespearean Sonnets.
AP Lit.: KA/Monson
Sonnet 18, by William Shakespeare
1. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
2. Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
3. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
4. And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
5. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
6. And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
7. And every fair from fair sometime declines,
8. By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
9. But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
10. Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
11. Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
12. When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
13. So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
14. So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Reading Strategies for Shakespearean Sonnets:
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Read the Sonnet Aloud. This is poetry, whereby the human voice carries meaning through resonance, cadence,
rhyme, etc.
Pay attention to Punctuation and Capitalization – these carry meaning. Note any irregularities or oddities.
Determine Pronouns: as with all poetry, pronoun recognition/assignment should happen before deciphering the
overall meaning of the text.
a. Locate pronouns and decide who or what they mean or could mean.
b. When there is an “I” and “you,” “I” is the speaker; “you” is the beloved.
Structure
a. Octave – the 1st 8 lines = a premise, a situation, or a question
b. Sustet – the last 6 lines = a response to the octave.
c. Line 9 begins the sustet, and should indicate some shift (look for FANBOYS, or a shift in time) to
signal an opposing idea or an answer to the octave.
d. End in Rhymed Couplet – a poetic conclusion
Iambic Pentameter
a. count out stressed and unstressed syllables in each line
b. read each line of stressed syllables = the core/stressed message
c. metrical disruptions indicate a stressed idea
1st/Last Rule of Shakespearean Sonnets = a summary of the whole message. This does not work with
Edwardian sonnets or Petrarchian sonnets, only Shakespeare.
For all poetry (not specific to sonnets or to Shakespeare) – these intentionally mean something:
a. Rhyme. Why rhyme particular words? This includes internal rhyme (rhyming within a line).
b. Images. What image is evoked? What is it compared to or contrasted with, and why? Herein is part of
the message.
c. Word Choice: are there words that carry specific meaning? Charged meaning? Worrds that are
specifically juxtaposed one another?
d. Repetition. Why say it more than once? – perhaps doubly important?
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Strategies for Reading Shakespearean Sonnets.
AP Lit.: KA/Monson
Sonnet 116, by William Shakespeare
1. Let me not to the marriage of true minds
2. Admit impediments; love is not love
3. Which alters when it alteration finds,
4. Or bends with the remover to remove:
5. O, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark,
6. looks on tempests and is never shaken;
7. It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
8. Whose worth's unknown, although his heighth be taken.
9. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
10. Within his bending sickle's compass come;
11. Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
12. But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
13. If this be error and upon me proved,
14. I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
SONNET 94, by William Shakespeare
1. They that have power to hurt and will do none,
2. That do not do the thing they most do show,
3. Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
4. Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow,
5. They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces
6. And husband nature’s riches from expense;
7. They are the lords and owners of their faces,
8. Others but stewards of their excellence.
9. The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet,
10. Though to itself it only live and die,
11. But if that flower with base infection meet,
12. The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
13. For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
14. Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
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Strategies for Reading Shakespearean Sonnets.
AP Lit.: KA/Monson
Sonnet 138, by William Shakespeare
When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutor'd youth,
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told:
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.
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Sonnet 29, by William Shakespeare
1. When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
2. I all alone beweep my outcast state
3. And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
4. And look upon myself and curse my fate,
5. Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
6. Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
7. Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
8. With what I most enjoy contented least;
9. Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
10. Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
11. Like to the lark at break of day arising
12. From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven 's gate;
13. For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
14. That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
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Strategies for Reading Shakespearean Sonnets.
AP Lit.: KA/Monson
Sonnet 130, William Shakespeare
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun-
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red-
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun-
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head:
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks,
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound.
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet by heav’n I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
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Sonnet 20, by William Shakespeare
1. A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted 2. Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion; 3. A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted 4. With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;
5. An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
6. Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth; 7. A man in hue, all 'hues' in his controlling,
8. Much steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
9. And for a woman wert thou first created; 10. Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
11. And by addition me of thee defeated, 12. By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
13. But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
14. Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.
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