SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS

Read the sonnets and answer the questions.

SONNET 1
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’st flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

STUDY QUESTIONS
1. Quatrain 1 talks about “procreation”. What does the first quatrain tell us?
2. Quatrain 2 talks about a young man. The speaker says that the young man is his
own enemy. Explain.
3. What does quatrain 3 tell about the man’s beauty?
4. What does the speaker ask the young man in the couplet?

SONNET 12
When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silvered o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard;
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow,
And nothing 'gainst Time’s scythe can make defense
Save breed to brave him when he takes thee hence.

STUDY QUESTIONS
1. What is the theme of this sonnet?
2. The speaker has doubts about something. Explain.
3. When I behold the violet past prime, And sable curls all silvered o'er with white;
Explain this sentence. Does “white” refer to winter or something else?
4. In the couplet, we see a reference to “him”. Who or what is him?
5. “Save breed to brave him”. What does the speaker mean?

SONNET 18
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 dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

STUDY QUESTONS
1. The first line is a question. What is the question and what follows in the 11
remaining lines ?
3. “Temperate” (line 2) is a pun (it has two meanings). What are the two meanings of
temperate?
2. Summarise the part after line 1 until the couplet.
3. What is the personification of “summer” in this sonnet?
4. Why does the beloved’s beauty last forever according to the speaker?

SONNET 97
How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December’s bareness every where!
And yet this time removed was summer’s time,
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:
Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me
But hope of orphans and unfather’d fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute;
Or, if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.

STUDY QUESTIONS
1. The speaker in this sonnet was separated from his lover. With what does he
compare this absence?
2. Which season of the year were they separated?
3. Why is autumn an important season according to the speaker?
4. How does autumn feel in the absence of his lover?
5. Indicate at least 3 examples of alliteration.