The Facts on File Companion to British Poetry Before 1600

each QUATRAIN (ll. 4, 8, 12) and in the fi nal line of the COUPLET (l. 14). However, “one” also occurs phoneti- cally or graphic ...

credited with the ability to prophesy, and poets who wrote of beauties of the past were merely “prefi guring” the young man beca ...

The poem begins with an appeal to the past, wherein the speaker claims that all previous monumental poems he has written to the ...

height above the horizon has been charted (“taken,” l. 8) with a quadrant or sextant so that the captain of the ship can plot a ...

that his love is, in the end, easily converted, or, in the language of the market, easily exchanged? See also SHAKESPEARE, WILLI ...

legal term meaning the settlement of an obligation, is to “render” the young man (l. 14). Render is a fl uid word: In culinary t ...

have rendered this woman plain or ugly, she is now considered beautiful because the black is natural. There has been so much fal ...

See also SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM; SHAKESPEARE’S SON- NETS (OVERVIEW). Theodora A. Jankowski Shakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnet 129 (“Th’ ...

The three QUATRAINs of Sonnet 130 focus on what the speaker’s mistress is not. In the fi rst quatrain we learn that her eyes are ...

both tell this lie while knowing perfectly well it is untrue. The third quatrain (ll. 9–12) explains the rea- son for the decept ...

vein by recognizing that the dark lady’s “might / Is more than my o’er-pressed defence can bide” (ll. 7–8). This recognition is ...

speech. It also implies that madness is “might” in a dis- torted world where mad “slanderers by mad ears believed be” (l. 12). T ...

Christian thought, devils are fallen angels. The woman corrupts the angel beloved by “wooing” (l. 8) him with her “foul pride” ( ...

In Sonnet 146, arguably Shakespeare’s most directly Christian work, there is an absence of God. Although the poem is clearly in ...

with a semicolon; the 1609 edition has the more appropriate comma, which emphasizes the linking function of line 10. If all of t ...

Shakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnets 153 and 154 (“Cupid lay by his brand and fell asleep” and “The little Love-god, lying once asleep ...

The scholar Paul E. McLane sought to identify doz- ens of Spenser’s allegorical fi gures and topical allusions and has pinned do ...

“EVEN NOW THAT CARE,” which dedicates the collection to Queen ELIZABETH I. The TRANSLATION TRADITION was strong in the 16th cent ...

and true faith. Rather than earthly sacrifi ces, the psalm explains, the most appropriate gift to God is praise. Signifi cantly, ...

this injustice is not entirely unexpected, as the oppres- sors have consistently declined to follow truth and right. Indeed, the ...