# data[].attributes.headline
Summaries of William Shakespeare's plays

# data[].attributes.subject
Summaries of William Shakespeare's plays

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Summaries of the plays of William Shakespeare.

# data[].attributes.headline
All of the information about the play divided into four sections: Story, Characters, Language and Staging.

# data[].attributes.subject
All of the information about the play divided into four sections: Story, Characters, Language and Staging.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
All of the information you need about the play is divided into four sections: Story, Characters, Language and Staging.

Each section has three different levels of information. Choose which level is right for you or simply move between them to find what you need. Here's a quick guide to help you get started with The Merchant of Venice. You may also find the fun home learning activities in our Activity Toolkits helpful!

Level 2 - More detailed information

Level 3 - In-depth study and analysis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Merchant of Venice | Shakespeare Learning Zone | Royal Shakespeare Company

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
All the information you need about the play is here, from Story to Characters, Language to Performance, including videos and photos from our shows.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
William Shakespeare - Playwright | Mini Bio | BIO

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
List of Shakespeare's plays by genre.

The groups below are the classification of Shakespeare's plays according to the First Folio, a collection of 36 of Shakespeare's plays published in 1623 by his colleagues. Since the interpretations of the plays change through the centuries, you might see them grouped differently in other places. An additional group, 'problem plays', has sometimes been used to categorise All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure and Troilus and Cressida.

Click on a play to find summaries, dates and sources, past RSC productions (images and videos), education resources and famous quotes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Tragedies, comedies and histories | Royal Shakespeare Company

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A list of all Shakespeare's plays by genre: comedies, tragedies & histories, with links to in-depth information, from plot synopses to famous scenes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Who was William Shakespeare? What was life like in Stratford-upon-Avon and London when he was alive?

Shakespeare before Sir Thomas Lucy in the hall of Charlecote. Oil on canvas by Thomas Brooks, 1857.

SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE

Very little is known for certain about William Shakespeare. What we do know about his life comes from registrar records, court records, wills, marriage certificates and his tombstone in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon.

William Shakespeare was baptised on 26 April 1564 at Holy Trinity in Stratford-Upon-Avon. Traditionally his birthday is celebrated three days earlier, on 23 April, St George's Day.

SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE

John Shakespeare married Mary Arden, the daughter of Robert Arden, a farmer from the nearby village of Wilmcote. In 1556 John bought the main part of the house in Henley Street which is now known as the 'Birthplace' and their family, including William, grew up there (see photo). John's principal business was that of a glover, but he also traded as a wool and corn merchant, and he is recorded in 1570 as being involved in money-lending.

SHAKESPEARE'S PARENTS

William's father, John Shakespeare, was an affluent glove maker, tanner and wool dealer who owned property in Stratford. For a number of years he played a prominent role in the municipal life of the town. He served on the town council and was elected bailiff (mayor). However, around 1576 John Shakespeare was beset by severe financial difficulties and he was forced to mortgage his wife's inheritance.

William's mother, Mary Arden, was the daughter of a prosperous farmer, Robert Arden, who had left her some land in Wilmcote, near Stratford. John and Mary Shakespeare had eight children: four daughters, of whom only one (Joan) survived childhood. William was the eldest of the four boys.

EDUCATION

William almost certainly went to one of Stratford's 'petty' or junior schools where he would have learnt his letters with the help of a hornbook. From the age of seven or thereabouts, he would have progressed to the King's New School where the emphasis would have been on Latin, it still being the international language of Europe in the 1500s. Shakespeare probably left school at the age of 14 or 15.

Shakespeare's plays reveal a detailed knowledge of the curriculum taught in such schools which were geared to teaching pupils Latin, both spoken and written. The classical writers studied in the classroom influenced Shakespeare's plays and poetry; for example, some of his ideas for plots and characters came from Ovid's tales, the plays of Terence and Plautus, and Roman history.

It is not known what Shakespeare did when he left school, probably at the age of 14, as was usual.

MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN

In 1582, when he was 18, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. She was 26. Anne was the daughter of a well-to-do farmer, Richard Hathaway of Hewlands Farm in nearby Shottery. Their first child, Susanna, was born in May 1583. Twins, Hamnet and Judith, were christened in February 1585. Anne's home, now known as Anne Hathaway's Cottage, still stands in the village of Shottery.

From 1585 until 1592, very little is known about Shakespeare. These are generally referred to as 'The Lost Years'. But by 1592 we know that he was in London where he was singled out by a rival dramatist, Robert Greene in his bitter deathbed pamphlet, A Groats-worth of Witte.

WRITING AND ACTING

Plague broke out in London in 1593, forcing the theatres to close. Shakespeare turned to writing poetry. In 1593 Shakespeare published an erotic poem, Venus and Adonis, dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton, a young courtier and favourite of Queen Elizabeth.

Shakespeare's earliest plays included Henry VI Parts I, II & III, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Titus Andronicus. The sonnets were also written about this time, though they were not published until 1609.

In 1594, Shakespeare became a founding member, actor, playwright and shareholder of the Lord Chamberlain's Men. Richard Burbage was the company's leading actor. He played roles such as Richard III, Hamlet, Othello and Lear. Under James VI/I, the company was renamed The King's Men. They performed at court more often than any other company.

DRAMA IN SHAKESPEARE'S STRATFORD

In Shakespeare's youth, Stratford was often visited by travelling troupes of professional actors. These players probably sparked his interest in the stage, and he may have entered the London theatre world though contacts made with them in Stratford.

We don't know when or why Shakespeare left Stratford for London, or what he was doing before becoming a professional actor and dramatist in the capital. There are various traditions and stories about the so-called 'lost years' between 1585 and 1592, a period for which there is virtually no evidence concerning his life.

WEALTH

Whereas John Shakespeare had lost a fortune, his son managed to amass great wealth in his lifetime.

In 1597, he bought New Place, one of the largest properties in Stratford. In 1598, he is listed as a resident of Chapel Street ward, in which New Place was situated. In 1601, when his father died, he may also, as the eldest son, have inherited the two houses in Henley Street.

In 1602 Shakespeare paid £320 in cash to William Combe and his nephew John for roughly 107 acres of land in Old Stratford.

He also bought a cottage and more land in Chapel Lane. In 1605, for £440, Shakespeare bought a half-interest in a lease of many tithes which brought him an annual interest of £60. When he died in 1616, he was a man of substantial wealth.

LAST YEARS

Shakespeare's elder daughter, Susanna, married a physician, John Hall in Stratford in 1607. Their only child, a daughter, Elizabeth, was born in 1608, the year in which Shakespeare's mother died. Judith Shakespeare, his younger daughter, married a vintner, Thomas Quiney in 1616. They had three sons: Shakespeare Quiney, who died in infancy; Richard (1618-139) and Thomas (1620-1639).

Sometime after 1611, Shakespeare retired to Stratford. On 25 March 1616, Shakespeare revised and signed his will. On 23 April, his presumed birthday, he died, aged 52. On 25 April, he was buried at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford.

Shakespeare's widow, Anne, died in 1623 and was buried beside him. Shakespeare's family line came to an end with the death of his grand-daughter Elizabeth in 1670.

In 1623, seven years after Shakespeare's death, John Heminge and Henry Condell (two actors from The King's Company) had Shakespeare's plays published by William Jaggard and his son, Isaac. This first folio contained 36 plays and sold for £1.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
William Shakespeare's life and times | Royal Shakespeare Company

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Discover more about the life and times of William Shakespeare, from his birth in 1564 through to his death 52 years later in 1616.

# data[].attributes.headline
Well-known quotes from each of Shakespeare's plays

# data[].attributes.subject
Well-known quotes from each of Shakespeare's plays

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Famous Quotes | Royal Shakespeare Company

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
William Shakespeare's name is synonymous with many of the famous lines he wrote in his plays and prose. Yet his poems are not nearly as recognizable to many as the characters and famous monologues from his many plays.

In Shakespeare's era (1564-1616), it was not profitable but very fashionable to write poetry. It also provided credibility to his talent as a writer and helped to enhance his social standing. It seems writing poetry was something he greatly enjoyed and did mainly for himself at times when he was not consumed with writing a play. Because of their more private nature, few poems, particularly long-form poems, have been published.

The two longest works that scholars agree were written by Shakespeare are entitled Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. Both dedicated to the Honorable Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, who seems to have acted as a sponsor and encouraging benefactor of Shakespeare's work for a brief time.

Both of these poems contain dozens of stanzas and comment on the depravity of unwanted sexual advances, showing themes throughout of guilt, lust, and moral confusion. In Venus and Adonis, an innocent Adonis must reject the sexual advances of Venus. Conversely in The Rape of Lucrece, the honorable and virtuous wife Lucrece is raped a character overcome with lust, Tarquin. The dedication to Wriothesley is much warmer in the second poem, suggesting a deepening of their relationship and Shakespeare's appreciation of his support.

A third and shorter narrative poem, A Lover's Complaint, was printed in the first collection of Shakespeare's sonnets. Most scholars agree now that it was also written by Shakespeare, though that was contested for some time. The poem tells the story of a young woman who is driven to misery by a persuasive suitor's attempts to seduce her. It is not regarded by critics to be his finest work.

Another short poem, The Phoenix and the Turtle, despairs the death of a legendary phoenix and his faithful turtle dove lover. It speaks to the frailty of love and commitment in a world where only death is certain.

There are 152 short sonnets attributed to Shakespeare. Among them, the most famous ones are Sonnet 29, Sonnet 71, and Sonnet 55. As a collection, narrative sequence of his Sonnets speaks to Shakespeare's deep insecurity and jealousy as a lover, his grief at separation, and his delight in sharing beautiful experiences with his romantic counterparts. However, few scholars believe that the sequence of the sonnets accurately depicts the order in which they were written. Because Shakespeare seemed to write primarily for his own private audience, dating these short jewels of literature has been next to impossible.

Within the sonnets Shakespeare seems to have two deliberate series: one describing his all consuming lust for a married woman with a dark complexion (the Dark Lady), and one about his confused love feelings for a handsome young man ( the Fair Youth). This dichotomy has been widely studied and debated and it remains unclear as to if the subjects represented real people or two opposing sides to Shakespeare's own personality.

Though some of Shakespeare's poetry was published without his permission in his lifetime, in texts such as The Passionate Pilgrim, the majority of the sonnets were published in 1609 by Thomas Thorpe. Before that time, it appears that Shakespeare would only have shared his poetry with a very close inner-circle of friends and loved ones. Thorpe's collection was the last of Shakespeare's non-dramatic work to be printed before his death.

Critics have praised the sonnets as being profoundly intimate and meditating on the values of love, lust, procreation, and death. Nowaday, Shakespeare is ranked as all-time most popular English poets on history, along with Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Walt Whitman.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
William Shakespeare’s name is synonymous with many of the famous lines he wrote in his plays and prose. Yet his poems are not nearly as recognizable to many as the characters and famous monologues from his many plays.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
While William Shakespeare's reputation is based primarily on his plays, he became famous first as a poet. With the partial exception of the Sonnets (1609), quarried since the early 19th century for autobiographical secrets allegedly encoded in them, the nondramatic writings have traditionally been pushed to the margins of the Shakespeare industry. Yet the study of his nondramatic poetry can illuminate Shakespeare's activities as a poet emphatically of his own age, especially in the period of extraordinary literary ferment in the last ten or twelve years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

Shakespeare's exact birth date remains unknown. He was baptized in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon on April 26, 1564, his mother's third child, but the first to survive infancy. This has led scholars to conjecture that he was born on April 23rd, given the era's convention of baptizing newborns on their third day. Shakespeare's father, John Shakespeare, moved to Stratford in about 1552 and rapidly became a prominent figure in the town's business and politics. He rose to be bailiff, the highest official in the town, but then in about 1575-1576 his prosperity declined markedly and he withdrew from public life. In 1596, thanks to his son's success and persistence, he was granted a coat of arms by the College of Arms, and the family moved into New Place, the grandest house in Stratford.

Speculation that William Shakespeare traveled, worked as a schoolmaster in the country, was a soldier and a law clerk, or embraced or left the Roman Catholic Church continues to fill the gaps left in the sparse records of the so-called lost years. It is conventionally assumed (though attendance registers do not survive) that Shakespeare attended the King's New School in Stratford, along with others of his social class. At the age of 18, in November 1582, he married Anne Hathaway, daughter of a local farmer. She was pregnant with Susanna Shakespeare, who was baptized on May 26, 1583. The twins, Hamnet and Judith Shakespeare, were baptized on February 2, 1585. There were no further children from the union.

William Shakespeare had probably been working as an actor and writer on the professional stage in London for four or five years when the London theaters were closed by order of the Privy Council on June 23, 1592. The authorities were concerned about a severe outbreak of the plague and alarmed at the possibility of civil unrest (Privy Council minutes refer to "a great disorder and tumult" in Southwark). The initial order suspended playing until Michaelmas and was renewed several times. When the theaters reopened in June 1594, the theatrical companies had been reorganized, and Shakespeare's career was wholly committed to the troupe known as the Lord Chamberlain's Men until 1603, when they were reconstituted as the King's Men.

By 1592 Shakespeare already enjoyed sufficient prominence as an author of dramatic scripts to have been the subject of Robert Greene's attack on the "upstart crow" in Greene's Groatsworth of Wit. Such renown as he enjoyed, however, was as transitory as the dramatic form. Play scripts, and their authors, were accorded a lowly status in the literary system, and when scripts were published, their link to the theatrical company (rather than to the scriptwriter) was publicized. It was only in 1597 that Shakespeare's name first appeared on the title page of his plays- Richard II and a revised edition of Romeo and Juliet.

While the London theaters were closed, some actors tried to make a living by touring outside the capital. Shakespeare turned from the business of scriptwriting to the pursuit of art and patronage; unable to pursue his career in the theatrical marketplace, he adopted a more conventional course. Shakespeare's first publication, Venus and Adonis (1593), was dedicated to the 18-year-old Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton. The dedication reveals a frank appeal for patronage, couched in the normal terms of such requests. Shakespeare received the Earl's patronage and went on to dedicate his next dramatic poem, Lucrece, to the young lord as well. Venus and Adonis was printed by Richard Field, a professionally accomplished printer who lived in Stratford. Shakespeare's choice of printer indicates an ambition to associate himself with unambiguously high-art productions, as does the quotation from Ovid's Amores on the title page: "Vilia miretur vulgus: mihi flavus Apollo / Pocula Castalia plena ministret acqua" (Let worthless stuff excite the admiration of the crowd: as for me, let golden Apollo ply me with full cups from the Castalian spring, that is, the spring of the Muses). Such lofty repudiation of the vulgar was calculated to appeal to the teenage Southampton. It also appealed to a sizable slice of the reading public. In the midst of horror, disease, and death, Shakespeare was offering access to a golden world, showing the delights of applying learning for pleasure rather than pointing out the obvious morals to be drawn from classical authors when faced with awful catastrophe.

With Venus and Adonis Shakespeare sought direct aristocratic patronage, but he also entered the marketplace as a professional author. He seems to have enjoyed a degree of success in the first of these objectives, given the more intimate tone of the dedication of Lucrece to Southampton in the following year. In the second objective, his triumph must have outstripped all expectation. Venus and Adonis went though 15 editions before 1640; if was first entered in the Stationers' Register on April 18, 1593. It is a fine and elegantly printed book, consisting of 1,194 lines in 199 six-line stanzas rhymed ababcc. The verse form was a token of social and literary ambition on Shakespeare's part. Its aristocratic cachet derived from its popularity at court, being favored by several courtier poets, such as Sir Walter Ralegh, Sir Arthur Gorges, and Sir Edward Dyer. Venus and Adonis is unquestionably a work of its age. In it a young writer courts respectability and patronage. At one level, of course, the poem is a traditional Ovidian fable, locating the origin of the inseparability of love and sorrow in Venus's reaction to the death of Adonis: "lo here I prophesy, / Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend /... all love's pleasure shall not match his woe." It invokes a mythic past that explains a painful present. Like so many texts of the 1590s, it features an innocent hero, Adonis, who encounters a world in which the precepts he has acquired from his education are tested in the surprising school of experience. His knowledge of love, inevitably, is not firsthand ("I have heard it is a life in death, / That laughs and weeps, and all but with a breath"). There is a staidly academic quality to his repudiation of Venus's "treatise," her "idle over-handled theme.

Shakespeare's literary and social aspirations are revealed at every turn. In his Petrarchism, for example, he adopts a mode that had become a staple of courtly discourse. Elizabethan politicians figured themselves and their personal and political conditions in Petrarchan terms. The inescapable and enduring frustrations of the courtier's life were habitually figured via the analogy of the frustrated, confused, but devoted Petrarchan lover. Yet Shakespeare's approach to this convention typifies the 1590s younger generation's sense of its incongruity. Lines such as "the love-sick queen began to sweat" are understandably rare in Elizabethan courtly discourse. Power relations expressed through the gendered language of Elizabeth's eroticized politics are reversed: "Her eyes petitioners to his eyes suing / ... Her eyes wooed still, his eyes disdain'd the wooing." It is Venus who deploys the conventional carpe diem arguments: "Make use of time / ... Fair flowers that are not gath'red in their prime, / Rot, and consume themselves in little time"; she even provides a blason of her own charms: "Thou canst not see one wrinkle in my brow, / Mine eyes are grey, and bright, and quick in turning."

Like most Elizabethan treatments of love, Shakespeare's work is characterized by paradox ("She's love, she loves, and yet she is not lov'd"), by narrative and thematic diversity, and by attempts to render the inner workings of the mind, exploring the psychology of perception ("Oft the eye mistakes, the brain being troubled"). The poem addresses such artistic preoccupations of the 1590s as the relation of poetry to painting and the possibility of literary immortality, as well as social concerns such as the phenomenon of "masterless women," and the (to men) alarming and unknowable forces unleashed by female desire, an issue that for a host of reasons fascinated Elizabeth's subjects. Indeed, Venus and Adonis flirts with taboos, as do other successful works of the 1590s, offering readers living in a paranoid, plague-ridden city a fantasy of passionate and fatal physical desire, with Venus leading Adonis "prisoner in a red-rose chain." In its day it was appreciated as an erotic fantasy glorying in the inversion of established categories and values, with a veneer of learning and the snob appeal of association with a celebrated aristocrat.

Since the Romantic period the frank sexuality of Shakespeare's Venus has held less appeal for literary critics and scholars than it had to Elizabethan and Jacobean readers. C.S. Lewis concludes in English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama (1954) that "if the poem is not meant to arouse disgust it was very foolishly written." In more recent years a combination of feminism, cultural studies, renewed interest in rhetoric, and a return to traditional archival research has begun to reclaim Venus and Adonis from such prejudice.

The elevated subject of Shakespeare's next publication, Lucrece, suggests that Venus and Adonis had been well received, Lucrece comprises 1,855 lines, in 265 stanzas. The stanza (as in Complaint of Rosamund) is the seven-line rhyme royal ( ababbcc) immortalized in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde (circa 1385) and thereafter considered especially appropriate for tragedy, complaint, and philosophical reflection. In places the narrator explicitly highlights the various rhetorical set pieces ("Here she exclaims against repose and rest"). Lucrece herself comments on her performance after the apostrophes to "comfort-killing Night, image of Hell," Opportunity, and Time. Elizabethan readers would have appreciated much about the poem, from its plentiful wordplay ("to shun the blot, she would not blot the letter"; "Ere she with blood had stain'd her stain'd excuse") and verbal dexterity, to the inner debate raging inside Tarquin. Though an exemplary tyrant from ancient history, he also exemplifies the conventional 1590s conflict between willful youthful prodigality and sententious experience ("My part is youth, and beats these from the stage"). The arguments in his "disputation / 'Tween frozen conscience and hot burning will" are those of the Petrarchan lover: "nothing can affection's course control," and "Yet strive I to embrace mine infamy." But the context of this rhetorical performance is crucial throughout. Unlike Venus and Adonis, Lucrece is not set in a mythical golden age, but in a fallen, violent world. This is particularly apparent in the rhetorical and ultimately physical competition of their debate--contrasting Tarquin's speeches with Lucrece's eloquent appeals to his better nature.

The combination of ancient and contemporary strengthens the political elements in the poem. It demonstrates tyranny in its most intimate form, committing a private outrage that is inescapably public; hence the rape is figured in terms both domestic (as a burglary) and public (as a hunt, a war, a siege). It also reveals the essential violence of many conventional erotic metaphors. Shakespeare draws on the powerful Elizabethan myth of the island nation as a woman: although Tarquin is a Roman, an insider, his journey from the siege of Ardea to Lucrece's chamber connects the two assaults. His attack figures a society at war with itself, and he himself is shown to be self-divided." Tyranny, lust, and greed translate the metaphors of Petrarchism into the actuality of rape, which is figured by gradatio, or climax: "What could he see but mightily he noted? / What did he note but strongly he desired?"

The historically validated interpretation-for Shakespeare's readers, descendants of Brutus in New Troy-is figured by Brutus, who "pluck'd the knife from Lucrece's side." He steps forward, casting off his reputation for folly and improvising a ritual (involving kissing the knife) that transforms grief and outrage at Lucrece's death into a determination to "publish Tarquin's foul offense" and change the political system. Brutus emerges from the shadows, reminding the reader that the poem, notwithstanding its powerful speeches and harrowing images, is also remarkable for what is unshown, untold, implicit. Until recently few commentators have taken up the interpretative challenge posed by Brutus. Traditionally Lucrece has been dismissed as a bookish, pedantic dry run for Shakespeare's tragedies, in William Empson's phrase, "the Bard doing five-finger exercises," containing what F.T. Prince in his 1960 edition of the poems dismisses as defective rhetoric in the treatment of an uninteresting story. Many critics have sought to define the poem's genre, which combines political fable, female complaint, and tragedy within a milieu of self-conscious antiquity. But perhaps the most significant recent developments have been the feminist treatments of the poem, the reawakening interest in rhetoric, and a dawning awareness of the work's political engagement. Lucrece, like so many of Shakespeare's historical tragedies, problematizes the categories of history and myth, of public and private, and exemplifies the bewildering nature of historical parallels. The self-conscious rhetorical display and the examination of representation is daringly politicized, explicitly, if inconclusively, connecting the aesthetic and the erotic with politics both sexual and state. At the time of its publication, Lucrece was Shakespeare's most profound meditation on history, particularly on the relations between public role and private morality and on the conjunction of forces-personal, political, social-that creates turning points in human history. In it he indirectly articulates the concerns of his generation and also, perhaps, of his young patron, who was already closely associated with the doomed earl of Essex.

In 1598 or 1599 the printer William Jaggard brought out an anthology of 20 miscellaneous poems, which he eventually attributed to Shakespeare, though the authorship of all 20 is still disputed. At least five are demonstrably Shakespearean. Poem 1 is a version of Sonnet 138 ("When My Love Swears that She Is Made of Truth"), poem 2 of Sonnet 144 ("Two Loves I Have, of Comfort and Despair"), and the rest are sonnets that appear in act 4 of Love's Labor's Lost (1598). Investigation of Jaggard's volume, called The Passionate Pilgrime, has yielded and will continue to yield insight into such matters as the relationship of manuscript to print culture in the 1590s, the changing nature of the literary profession, and the evolving status of the author. It may also, as with The Phoenix and Turtle (1601), lead to increased knowledge of the chronology and circumstances of Shakespeare's literary career, as well as affording some glimpses of his revisions of his texts.

"With this key / Shakespeare unlocked his heart," wrote William Wordsworthin " Scorn not the Sonnet" (1827) of the Sonnets. "If so," replied Robert Browning in his poem "House" (1876), "the less Shakespeare he." None of Shakespeare's works has been so tirelessly ransacked for biographical clues as the 154 sonnets, published with A Lover's Complaint by Thomas Thorpe in 1609. Unlike the narrative poems, they enjoyed only limited commercial success during Shakespeare's lifetime, and no further edition appeared until Benson's in 1640. The title page, like Jaggard's of The Passionate Pilgrim, relies upon the drawing power of the author's name and promises "SHAKE-SPEARES / SONNETS / Never before Imprinted."

The 154 sonnets are conventionally divided between the "young man" sonnets (1-126) and the "dark lady" sonnets (127-152), with the final pair often seen as an envoy or coda to the collection. There is no evidence that such a division has chronological implications, though the volume is usually read in such a way. Shakespeare employs the conventional English sonnet form: three quatrains capped with a couplet. Drama is conjured within individual poems, as the speaker wrestles with some problem or situation; it is generated by the juxtaposition of poems, with instant switches of tone, mood, and style; it is implied by cross-references and interrelationships within the sequence as a whole.

There remains a question, however, of how closely Shakespeare was involved in preparing the text of the sonnets for publication. Some commentators have advocated skepticism about all attempts to recover Shakespeare's intention. Others have looked more closely at Thorpe, at Benson, and at the circulation of Shakespeare's verse in the manuscript culture: these investigations have led to a reexamination of the ideas of authorship and authority in the period. Although scholarly opinion is still divided, several influential studies and editions in recent years have argued, on a variety of grounds, for the authority, integrity, and coherence of Thorpe's text, an integrity now regarded as including A Lover's Complaint.

The subsequent history of the text of the sonnets is inseparable from the history of Shakespeare's reputation. John Benson's Poems: Written by Wil. Shake-speare. Gent (1640) was part of an attempt to "canonize" Shakespeare, collecting verses into a handsome quarto that could be sold as a companion to the dramatic folio texts ("to be serviceable for the continuance of glory to the deserved author in these his poems"). Benson dropped a few sonnets, added other poems, provided titles for individual pieces, changed Thorpe's order, conflated sonnets, and modified some of the male pronouns, thereby making the sequence seem more unambiguously heterosexual in its orientation. In recent years there has been increasing study of Benson's edition as a distinct literary production in its own right.

The Romantic compulsion to read the sonnets as autobiography inspired attempts to rearrange them to tell their story more clearly. It also led to attempts to relate them to what was known or could be surmised about Shakespeare's life. Some commentators speculated that the publication of the sonnets was the result of a conspiracy by Shakespeare's rivals or enemies, seeking to embarrass him by publishing love poems apparently addressed to a man rather than to the conventional sonnet-mistress. The five appendices to Hyder Edward Rollins's Variorum edition document the first century of such endeavors. Attention was directed toward "problems" such as the identity of Master W. H., of the young man, of the rival poet, and of the dark lady (a phrase, incidentally, never used by Shakespeare in the sonnets). The disappearance of the sonnets from the canon coincided with the time when Shakespeare's standing as the nation's bard was being established. The critics' current fascination is just as significant for what it reveals about contemporary culture, as the "Shakespeare myth" comes under attack from various directions.

The sonnets were apparently composed during a period of ten or a dozen years starting in about 1592-1593. In Palladis Tamia Meres refers to the existence of "sugared sonnets" circulating among Shakespeare's "private friends," some which were published in The Passionate Pilgrim. The fact of prior circulation has important implications for the sonnets. The particular poems that were in circulation suggest that the general shape and themes of the Sonnets were established from the earliest stages. Evidence suggesting a lengthy period of composition is inconvenient for commentators seeking to unlock the autobiographical secret of the sonnets. An early date (1592-1594) argues for Southampton as the boy and Christopher Marlowe as the rival poet; a date a decade later brings George Herbert and George Chapman into the frame. There are likewise early dark ladies (Lucy Negro, before she took charge of a brothel) and late (Emilia Lanier, Mary Fitton). There may, of course, have been more than one young man, rival, and dark lady, or in fact the sequence may not be autobiographical at all.

No Elizabethan sonnet sequence presents an unambiguous linear narrative, a novel in verse. Shakespeare's is no exception. Yet neither are the Sonnets a random anthology, a loose gathering of scattered rhymes. While groups of sonnets are obviously linked thematically, such as the opening sequence urging the young man to marry (1-17), and the dark lady sequence (127-152), the ordering within those groups is not that of continuous narrative. There are many smaller units, with poems recording that the friend has become the lover of the poet's mistress (40-42), or expressing jealousy of the young man's friendship with a rival poet (78-86). Sonnet 44 ends with a reference to two of the four elements "so much of earth and water wrought," and 45 starts with "The other two, slight air and purging fire." Similarly indivisible are the two "horse" sonnets 50 and 51, the "Will" sonnets 135 and 136, and 67 and 68. Sonnets 20 and 87 are connected as much by their telling use of feminine rhyme as by shared themes. Dispersed among the poems are pairs and groups that amplify or comment on each other, such as those dealing with absence (43-45, 47-48, 50-52, and 97-98).

"My name is Will," declares the speaker of 136. Sonnet 145 apparently puns on Anne Hathaway's name ("I hate, from hate away she threw"). Elizabethan sonneteers, following Sir Philip Sidney, conventionally teased their readers with hints of an actuality behind the poems. Sidney had given Astrophil his own coat of arms, had quibbled with the married name of the supposed original for Stella (Penelope Rich) and with the Greek etymology of his own name (Philip, "lover of horses") in Astrophil and Stella sonnets 41, 49, and 53. Shakespeare's speaker descends as much from Astrophil as from Daniel's more enigmatic persona, most obviously in the deployment of the multiple sense of will in 135 and 136. Yet Shakespeare's sequence is unusual in including sexual consummation (Spenser's Amoretti led to the celebration of marriage in Epithalamion, 1595) and unique in its persuasion to marry. There is evidence that some contemporary readers were disturbed by the transgressive and experimental features of 1590s erotic writing. Works by Marston and Marlowe were among those banned in 1599 along with satires and other more conventional kindling. Benson's much-discussed modification of the text of the Sonnets indicates at least a certain level of anxiety about the gender of the characters in the poems. Benson retained Sonnet 20 but dropped 126 ("O Thou My Lovely Boy") and changed the direct address of 108 ("Nothing, Sweet Boy") to the neutral "Nothing, Sweet Love."

The speaker sums up his predicament in 144, one of the Passionate Pilgrim poems:

Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman color'd ill.

The speaker's attraction to the "worser spirit" is figured in harsh language throughout the sequence: in fact, the brutal juxtaposition of lyricism and lust is characteristic of the collection as a whole. The consequent disjointedness expresses a form of psychological verisimilitude by the standards of Shakespeare's day, where discontinuity and repetition were held to reveal the inner state of a speaker.

The anachronism of applying modern attitudes toward homosexuality to early modern culture is self-evident. Where Shakespeare and his contemporaries drew their boundaries cannot be fully determined, but they were fascinated by the Platonic concept of androgyny, a concept drawn on by the queen herself almost from the moment of her accession. Sonnet 53 is addressed to an inexpressible lover, who resembles both Adonis and Helen. Androgyny is only part of the exploration of sexuality in the sonnets, however. A humanist education could open windows onto a world very different from post-Reformation England. Plato's praise of love between men was in marked contrast to the establishment of capital punishment as the prescribed penalty for sodomy in 1533.

In the Sonnets the relationship between the speaker and the young man both invites and resists definition, and it is clearly presented as a challenge to orthodoxy. If at times it seems to correspond to the many Elizabethan celebrations of male friendship, at others it has a raw physicality that resists such polite categorization. Even in sonnet 20, where sexual intimacy seems to be explicitly denied, the speaker's mind runs to bawdy puns. The speaker refers to the friend as "rose," "my love," "lover," and "sweet love," and many commentators have demonstrated the repeated use of explicitly sexual language to the male friend (in 106, 109, and 110, for example). On the other hand, the acceptance of the traditional distinction between the young man and the dark lady sonnets obscures the fact that Shakespeare seems deliberately to render the gender of his subject uncertain in the vast majority of cases.

For some commentators the sequence also participates in the so-called birth of the author, a crucial feature of early modern writing: the liberation of the writer from the shackles of patronage. In Joel Fineman's analysis, Shakespeare creates a radical internalization of Petrarchism, reordering its dynamic by directing his attention to the speaker's subjectivity rather than to the ostensible object of the speaker's devotion: the poetry of praise becomes poetry of self-discovery.

Sidney's Astrophil had inhabited a world of court intrigue, chivalry, and international politics, exemplifying the overlap between political and erotic discourse in Elizabethan England. The circumstances of Shakespeare's speaker, in contrast, are not those of a courtier but of a male of the upwardly mobile "middling sort." Especially in the young man sonnets, there is a marked class anxiety, as the speaker seeks to define his role, whether as a friend, a tutor, a counselor, an employee, or a sexual rival. Not only are comparisons drawn from the world of the professional theater ("As an unperfect actor on the stage" in sonnet 23), but also from the world of business: compared to the prodigal "Unthrifty loveliness" of the youth (sonnet 4), "Making a famine where abundance lies" (1), the speaker inhabits a bourgeois world of debts, loans, repayment, and usury, speaking in similar language to the Dark Lady: "I myself am mortgaged to thy will" (134).

Yet Shakespeare's linguistic performance extends beyond the "middling sort." He was a great popularizer, translating court art and high art-John Lyly, Sidney, Edmund Spenser -into palatable and sentimental commercial forms. His sequence is remarkable for its thematic and verbal richness, for its extraordinary range of nuances and ambiguities. He often employs words in multiple senses (as in the seemingly willfully indecipherable resonance, punning, polysemy, implication, and nuance of sonnet 94). Shakespeare's celebrated verbal playfulness, the polysemy of his language, is a function of publication, whether by circulation or printing. His words acquire currency beyond himself and become the subject of reading and interpretation.

This linguistic richness can also be seen as an act of social aspiration: as the appropriation of the ambiguity axiomatically inherent in courtly speech. The sequence continues the process of dismantling traditional distinctions among rhetoric, philosophy, and poetry begun in the poems of 1593-1594. The poems had dealt in reversal and inversion and had combined elements of narrative and drama. The Sonnets occupy a distinct, marginal space between social classes, between public and private, narrative and dramatic, and they proceed not through inverting categories but rather through interrogating them. Variations are played on Elizabethan conventions of erotic discourse: love without sex, sex without love, a "master-mistress" who is "prick'd ... out for women's pleasure" as the ultimate in unattainable ("to my purpose nothing," 20) adoration. Like Spenser's Amoretti, Shakespeare's collection meditates on the relationships among love, art, time, and immortality. It remains a meditation, however, even when it seems most decided.

The consequences of love, the pain of rejection, desertion, and loss of reputation are powerful elements in the poem that follows the sequence. Despite Thorpe's unambiguous attribution of the piece to Shakespeare, A Lover's Complaint was rejected from the canon, on distinctly flimsy grounds, until quite recently. It has been much investigated to establish its authenticity and its date. It is now generally accepted as Shakespearean and dated at some point between 1600 and 1609, possibly revised from a 1600 first version for publication in Thorpe's volume. The poem comprises 329 lines, disposed into 47 seven-line rhyme-royal stanzas. It draws heavily on Spenser and Daniel and is the complaint of a wronged woman about the duplicity of a man. It is in some sense a companion to Lucrece and to All's Well That Ends Well (circa 1602-1603) as much as to the sonnets. Its connections with the narrative poems, with the plays, and with the genre of female complaint have been thoroughly explored. The woman is a city besieged by an eloquent wooer ("how deceits were gilded in his smiling"), whose essence is dissimulation ("his passion, but an art of craft"). There has been a growing tendency to relate the poem to its immediate context in Thorpe's Sonnets volume and to find it a reflection or gloss or critique of the preceding sequence.

Interest in Shakespeare's nondramatic writings has increased markedly in recent years. They are no longer so easily marginalized or dismissed as conventional, and they contribute in powerful ways to a deeper understanding of Shakespeare's oeuvre and the Elizabethan era in which he lived and wrote.

Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616, on what may have been his 52nd birthday.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
While William Shakespeare's reputation is based primarily on his plays, he became famous first as a poet. With the partial exception of the Sonnets (1609), quarried since the early 19th century for autobiographical secrets allegedly encoded in them, the nondramatic writings have traditionally been...

# data[].attributes.headline
Shakespeare’s Sonnets with with a modern English interpretation

# data[].attributes.subject
Shakespeare’s Sonnets with with a modern English interpretation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Take your pick of Shakespeare's sonnets below, along with a modern English interpretation of each one aid understanding.

Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets published in his 'quarto' in 1609, covering themes such as the passage of time, mortality, love, beauty, infidelity, and jealousy. The first 126 of Shakespeare's sonnets are addressed to a young man, and the last 28 addressed to a woman - a mysterious 'dark lady'.

What is a Shakespearean sonnet?

Shakespeare's sonnets are poems of expressive ideas and thoughts that are layered with multiple meanings, and always have two things in common:
1. All sonnets have fourteen lines 2. All sonnets are written in iambic pentameter
Read more about what a sonnet is, and iambic pentameter.

Read all 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets

Take your pick from the list of Shakespeare sonnets below (or learn how to write a sonnet of your own!):
Sonnet 1: From Fairest Creatures We Desire Increase Sonnet 2: When Forty Winters Shall Besiege Thy Brow Sonnet 3: Look In Thy Glass, And Tell The Face Thou Viewest Sonnet 4: Unthrifty Loveliness, Why Dost Thou Spend Sonnet 5: Those Hours, That With Gentle Work Did Frame Sonnet 6: Then Let Not Winter's Ragged Hand Deface Sonnet 7: Lo! In The Orient When The Gracious Light Sonnet 8: Music To Hear, Why Hear'st Thou Music Sadly? Sonnet 9: Is It For Fear To Wet A Widow's Eye Sonnet 10: For Shame Deny That Thou Bear'st Love To Any Sonnet 11: As Fast As Thou Shalt Wane, So Fast Thou Grow Sonnet 12: When I Do Count The Clock That Tells Time Sonnet 13: O! That You Were Your Self! But, Love, You Are Sonnet 14: Not From The Stars Do I My Judgement Pluck Sonnet 15: When I Consider Everything That Grows Sonnet 16: But Wherefore Do Not You A Mightier Way Sonnet 17: Who Will Believe In My Verse In Time To Come Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day? Sonnet 19: Devouring Time, Blunt Thou The Lion's Paw Sonnet 20: A Woman's Face With Nature's Own Hand Painted Sonnet 21: So It Is Not With Me As With That Muse Sonnet 22: My Glass Shall Not Persuade Me I Am Old Sonnet 23: As An Unperfect Actor On The Stage Sonnet 24: Mine Eye Hath Play'd The Painter and Hath Steel'd Sonnet 25: Let Those Who Are In Favour With Their Stars Sonnet 26: Lord Of My Love, To Whom In Vassalage Sonnet 27: Weary With Toil, I Haste To My Bed Sonnet 28: How Can I Then Return In Happy Plight Sonnet 29: When In Disgrace With Fortune and Men's Eyes Sonnet 30: When To The Sessions Of Sweet Silent Thought Sonnet 31: Thy Bosom Is Endeared With All Hearts Sonnet 32: If Thou Survive My Well-Contented Day Sonnet 33: Full Many A Glorious Morning I Have Seen Sonnet 34: Why Didst Thou Promise Such A Beauteous Day Sonnet 35: No More Be Grieved At That Which Thou Hast Done Sonnet 36: Let Me Confess That We Two Must Be Twain Sonnet 37: As A Decrepit Father Takes Delight Sonnet 38: How Can My Muse Want Subject To Invent Sonnet 39: O! How Thy Worth With Manners May I Sing Sonnet 40: Take All My Loves, My Love, Yea Take Them All Sonnet 41: Those Pretty Wrongs That Liberty Commits Sonnet 42: That Thou Hast It Is Not All My Grief Sonnet 43: When Most I Wink, Then Do Mine Eyes Best See Sonnet 44: If The Dull Substance Of My Flesh Were Thought Sonnet 45: That Thou Hast It Is Not All My Grief Sonnet 46: Mine Eye And Heart Are At A Mortal War Sonnet 47: Betwixt Mine Eye And Heart A League Is Took Sonnet 48: How Careful Was I When I Took My Way Sonnet 49: Against That Time, If Ever That Time Come Sonnet 50: How Heavy Do I Journey On The Way Sonnet 51: Thus Can My Love Excuse The Slow Offence Sonnet 52: So Am I As The Rich, Whose Blessed Key Sonnet 53: What Is Your Substance, Whereof Are You Made Sonnet 54: O! How Much More Doth Beauty Beauteous Seem Sonnet 55: O! Not Marble, Nor The Gilded Monuments Sonnet 56: Sweet Love, Renew Thy Force; Be It Not Said Sonnet 57: Being Your Slave What Should I Do But Tend Sonnet 58: That God Forbid, That Made Me First Your Slave Sonnet 59: If There Be Nothing New, But That Which Is Sonnet 60: Like As The Waves Make Towards The Pebbled Shore Sonnet 61: Is It Thy Will, Thy Image Should Keep Open Sonnet 62: Sin Of Self-love Possesseth All Mine Eye Sonnet 63: Against My Love Shall Be As I Am Now Sonnet 64: When I Have Seen By Time's Fell Hand Defac'd Sonnet 65: Since Brass, Nor Stone, Nor Earth, Nor Boundless Sea Sonnet 66: Tired For All These, For Restful Death I Cry Sonnet 67: Ah! Wherefore With Infection Should He Live Sonnet 68: In Days Long Since, Before These Last So Bad Sonnet 69: Those Parts Of Thee That The World's Eye Doth View Sonnet 70: That Thou Art Blamed Shall Not Be Thy Defect Sonnet 71: No Longer Mourn For Me When I Am Dead Sonnet 72: O! Lest The World Should Task You To Recite Sonnet 73: That Time Of Year Thou Mayst In Me Behold Sonnet 74: But Be Contented When That Fell Arrest Sonnet 75: So Are You To My Thoughts As Food To Life Sonnet 76: Why Is My Verse So Barren Of New Pride Sonnet 77: Thy Glass Will Show Thee How Thy Beauties Wear Sonnet 78: So Oft Have I Invoked Thee For My Muse Sonnet 79: Whilst I Alone Did Call Upon Thy Aid Sonnet 80: O! How I Faint When I Do Write Of You Sonnet 81: Or I Shall Live Your Epitaph To Make Sonnet 82: I Grant Thou Wert Not Married To My Muse Sonnet 83: I Never Saw That You Did Painting Need Sonnet 84: Who Is It That Says Most, Which Can Say More Sonnet 85: My Tongue-Tied Muse In Manners Holds Her Still Sonnet 86: Was It The Proud Sail Of His Great Verse Sonnet 87: Farewell! Thou Art Too Dear For My Possessing Sonnet 88: When Thou Shalt Be Dispos'd To Set Me Light Sonnet 89: Say That Thou Didst Forsake Me For Some Fault Sonnet 90: Then Hate Me When Thou Wilt; If Ever, Now Sonnet 91: Some Glory In Ttheir Birth, Some In Their Skill Sonnet 92: But Do Thy Worst To Steal Thyself Away Sonnet 93: So Shall I Live, Supposing Thou Art True Sonnet 94: They That Have Power To Hurt, And Will Do None Sonnet 95: How Sweet And Lovely Dost Thou Make The Shame Sonnet 96: Some Say Thy Fault Is Youth, Some Wantonness Sonnet 97: How Like A Winter Hath My Absence Been Sonnet 98: From You Have I Been Absent In The Spring Sonnet 99: The Forward Violet Thus Did I Chide Sonnet 100: Where Art Thou, Muse, That Thou Forget'st So Long Sonnet 101: O Truant Muse, What Shall Be Thy Amends Sonnet 102: My Love Is Strengthen'd, Though More Weak In Seeming Sonnet 103: Alack, What Poverty My Muse Brings Forth Sonnet 104: To Me, Fair Friend, You Never Can Be Old Sonnet 105: Let Not My Love Be Called Idolatry Sonnet 106: When In The Chronicle Of Wasted Time Sonnet 107: Not Mine Own Fears, Nor The Prophetic Soul Sonnet 108: What's In The Brain That Ink May Character Sonnet 109: O! Never Say That I Was False Of Heart Sonnet 110: Alas! 'Tis True, I Have Gone Here And There Sonnet 111: O For My Sake Do You With Fortune Chide Sonnet 112: Your Love And Pity Doth Th' Impression Fill Sonnet 113: Since I Left You, Mine Eye Is In My Mind Sonnet 114: Or Whether Doth My Mind, Being Crowned With You Sonnet 115: Those Lines That I Before Have Writ Do Lie Sonnet 116: Let Me Not To The Marriage Of True Minds Sonnet 117: Accuse Me Thus: That I Have Scanted All Sonnet 118: Like As To Make Our Appetites More Keen Sonnet 119: What Potions Have I Drunk Of Siren Tears Sonnet 120: That You Were Once Unkind Befriends Me Now Sonnet 121: 'Tis Better To Be Vile Than Vile Esteemed Sonnet 122: Thy Gift, Thy Tables, Are Within My Brain Sonnet 123: Thy Pyramids Built Up With Newer Might Sonnet 124: If My Dear Love Were But The Child Of State Sonnet 125: Were't Ought To Me I Bore The Canopy Sonnet 126: O Thou, My Lovely Boy, Who In Thy Pow'r Sonnet 127: In The Old Age Black Was Not Counted Fair Sonnet 128: How Oft When Thou, My Music, Music Play'st Sonnet 129: Th' Expense Of Spirit In A Waste Of Shame Sonnet 130: My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun Sonnet 131: Thou Art As Tyrannous, So As Thou Art Sonnet 132: Thine Eyes I Love, And They, As Pitying Me Sonnet 133: Beshrew That Heart That Makes My Heart To Groan Sonnet 134: So Now I Have Confessed That He Is Thine Sonnet 135: Whoever Hath Her Wish, Thou Hast Thy Will Sonnet 136: If Thy Soul Check Thee That I Come So Near Sonnet 137: Thou Blind Fool, Love, What Dost Thou To Mine Eyes Sonnet 138: When My Love Swears That She Is Made Of Truth Sonnet 139: O! Call Not Me To Justify The Wrong Sonnet 140: Be Wise As Thou Art Cruel Sonnet 141: In Faith I Do Not Love You With Mine Eyes Sonnet 142: Love Is My Sin, And Thy Dear Virtue Hate Sonnet 143: Lo, As A Careful Housewife Runs To Catch Sonnet 144: Two Loves I Have Of Comfort And Despair Sonnet 145: Those Lips That Love's Own Hand Did Make Sonnet 146: Poor Soul, The Centre Of My Sinful Earth Sonnet 147: My Love Is As A Fever Longing Still Sonnet 148: O Me! What Eyes Hath Love Put In My Head Sonnet 149: Canst Thou, O Cruel! Say I Love Thee Not Sonnet 150: O! From What Power Hast Thou This Powerful Might Sonnet 151: Love Is Too Young To Know What Conscience Is Sonnet 152: In Loving Thee Thou Kow'st I Am Forsworn Sonnet 153: Cupid Laid By His Brand And Fell Asleep Sonnet 154: The Little Love-God Lying Once Asleep
This complete collection of 154 sonnets with explanations is available in an ebook to download now.

Famous Sonnets By Shakespeare

Shakespeare published 154 sonnets, and although they are all poems of the highest quality, there are some that have entered deeply into the consciousness of our culture to become the most famous Shakespeare sonnets. This handful of sonnets are quoted regularly by people at all levels of modern western life - sometimes without even realizing that they are quoting a line from Shakespeare.

In our humble opinion the 8 sonnets below represent Shakespeare's most famous words in the sonnet form:

Perhaps the most famous of all the sonnets is Sonnet 18, where Shakespeare addresses a young man to whom he is very close. It would be impossible to say whether Shakespeare was an arrogant man because we don't know what he was like. We also don't know whether he thought he was the 'great,' immortal writer that we regard him as today. However, after describing the young man's great beauty, he suggests that his poetry is 'eternal' and ends by stating that as long as there are people who can still read, the sonnet, and therefore the description of the young man's beauty, will still be there.

An interesting take on aging and love. The narrator describes the things that people agonize over as they descend into old age - all the regrets and the pain of reliving the mistakes he has made. It's full of agony but when he thinks about his beloved all the regrets and pain evaporate.

This is a poem about loss; the loss of a loved one. Shakespeare approaches it by expressing the contrast in the way we feel when the morning sun is shining brightly and when it's obscured by clouds, making the world a forlorn place. When he was loved by the beloved it was like the glorious morning, but now, having lost the beloved, it feels like an overcast and gloomy morning. He concludes that he doesn't condemn the beloved because human frailty, even among the best of humanity, is just as much a part of nature as the obscuring clouds are.

The narrator of Sonnet 73 is approaching death and thinking about how different it is from being young. It's like the branch of a tree where birds once sang but the birds have gone and the leaves have fallen, leaving only a few dry yellow leaves. It's like the twilight of a beautiful day, where there is only the black night ahead. It's like the glowing ashes of a fire that once roared. The things that one gave him life have destroyed his life. From that experience, he has learned that one has to love life as strongly as one can because it will end all too soon.

Here Shakespeare expresses the love one person has for another by showing how the beauty of the beloved doesn't change in the eyes of the lover. He shows time passing through the seasons and the years, everything changing. Except for the beauty of the beloved. He goes further by saying that no matter how long the world will endure, even though the beloved is long dead there will never be another as beautiful.

There are two striking definitions of love that we refer to again and again. Perhaps the most popular of the two is in Paul's letter to the Corinthians ( Corinthians 13: 4-8):

Love is patient, love is kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude.
Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.

Paul's text is as well known as Sonnet 116 because it is used in most weddings as the young couple stands before the minister. But Shakespeare's sonnet employs an amazing array of poetic devices to convey the eternal nature of love. Shakespeare ends by staking everything on his observations about love by asserting that if he is wrong about it then no-one ever wrote anything and no-one ever loved.

Sonnet 129 is an interesting take on the imperative force of lust, but its ultimate shallowness. Everyone knows how shallow and guilt-producing lust is but very few men can avoid it. Shakespeare shows how lust brings out the very worst in people and the extremes they will go to. And then he explains the guilt that follows the satisfaction of one's lust.

Shakespeare is expressing the kind of love that has nothing to do with the beloved's looks. He satirizes the usual way of expressing love for a woman - praising her lips and her hair, the way she walks, and all the things that a young man may rave about when he thinks about his beloved. What he does is invert those things, assert that his beloved is ugly, ungainly, bad-smelling, etc, but ends by saying that his love for her is as 'rare' as that of any young man who writes flatteringly about the object of his love.

Interested in sonnets from other authors? Check out our sonnet examples from highly regarded poets who do things a little differently to Shakespeare's sonnets.

Publishing Shakespeare's Sonnets

A widely held belief contends that Shakespeare's sonnets were published without his consent. Had Shakespeare endorsed their publication, many believe he would have provided their printer with an authoritative text and a dedication. However, "Shakes-peares Sonnets" contains no dedication from the author and the text has many errors. Some critics also maintain that some sonnets are unfinished and that the sequence is too incoherent to have been intended for publication.

Exponents of this view have argued that someone whom Shakespeare trusted betrayed him by giving the poems to their first publisher, Thomas Thope, or that a thief, perhaps motivated by animosity or personal profit, seized the poets manuscript and sold it on. Some hold that the publication of the sonnets surely upset Shakespeare, whose poems dealt with scandalous forms of love; homoerotic and adulterous. Others variously insist that these subjects are more shocking to post-Victorian readers than to Jacobean ones; that, whilst the sonnets voice strong feelings, these were entirely appropriate to the form; and that emotions expressed in his sonnets do not mirror Shakespeare's own any more than those of dramatic characters in his plays.

Who Were The Shakespeare Sonnets Dedicated To?

Certain features of the sonnet form - not least the first-person narrative and themes of love - give the impression of offering direct access to their author's inner world. Since there has long been intense curiosity about the 'youth' addressed in the sonnets, clues to his identity have also been extracted with no little strain from the frontispiece of the first edition. The author of this dedication, T.T, was Thomas Thorpe, the publisher. But the identity of the "begetter" of the sonnets, "Mr W. H." remains a mystery. Some think this is a misprint for "Mr W. S." or "Mr W. Sh.", as in William Shakespeare. Others suspect that the "begetter" refers to the scoundrel who may have conveyed the poems to Thorpe against Shakespeare's wishes. But the most widely held assumption is that the "beggetter" must be the person who inspired the "ensuing sonnets", the majority of which address a young man.

Working from the scant evidence offered by the initials W. H., literary detectives have proposed many candidates. One is Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, to whom Shakespeare dedicated Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece in the mid-1590s. Another is William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, whose name figures among those to whom the First Folio was dedicated in 1623. A third candidate is Sir William Hervey, stepfather of the Earl of Southampton, who may have commissioned lyrics urging the young man to marry and produce an heir - the first 17 sonnets of the sequence treat this theme. Of these candidates, however, two were earls and one was a gentleman, referred to as "Sir". None would have been called "Mr" save by error or to suggest intimacy. In the end, these probing enigmas of Shakespeare's sonnets are forced to speculate; information is poor, scarce and inconclusive.

The numbers behind the sonnets

Who knew that Shakespeare's sonnets and mathematics were so linked?

In the super-interesting video below, Professor Roger Bowley talks about the tight constraints - and shape - that numbers gave to Shakespeare's sonnets.

What's your take on the Shakespeare sonnets listed above? Let us know by joining in the conversation in the comments section below!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Shakespeare Sonnets: All 154 Sonnets With Explanations✔️

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets. Read all Shakespeare sonnets here, along with an explanation of each, intended to offer an easy read-through to aid understanding

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Did you ever wonder what it was like to live in Shakespeare's era? What his hometown Stratford upon Avon would have been like in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, or what England's capital city, London, was like then?

Shakespeare lived from 1564 to 1616 - the early modern period between the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution. Looking through a British lens, Shakespeare's lifetime spanned most of the Elizabethan era (1558-1603) and the start of the Jacobean era (1603-1625).

London was gaining importance as a trading city and was beginning its rapid growth to become one of the first metropolis in Europe.

In this section of the website we place Shakespeare in his historical era, examine how his language evolved into the modern English we all speak and read today, and drill into his contemporaries writing plays for and acting in the London theatre scene.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Shakespeare's Era: What Life Was Like In Shakespeare's Time?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Did you ever wonder what it was like to live in Shakespeare's era? What his hometown Stratford upon Avon would have been like in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, or what England's capital city, London, was like then? Shakespeare lived from 1564 to 1616 - the early modern period between the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Perhaps the most celebrated expression of betrayal in Western culture is Julius Caesar's "et tu Brute." Stabbed by each...

During the time that Shakespeare and his contemporary playwrights were writing their plays beliefs about good and evil were changing....

Hatred is one of the most powerful emotions, and a great driver of action in drama. Unlike some of the other emotional forces....

Sometimes Shakespeare will repeat individual theme words throughout the play. In Macbeth the most frequent word is 'blood'. 'Blood' is a word with a multitude of meanings. At its most dramatic it refers to violence, something that's very prominent in the play. There is a lot of killing, a lot of blood seen, and the characters use the word in everything they say. It's here that Shakespeare invents the word 'bloody', turning 'blood' into an adjective for the first time. 'Blood' also refers to family, as in blood relatives. Macbeth is the cousin of Duncan, whom he murders. Immediately after the murder the word 'blood' is dramatised by the indelible blood on his hands. Blood also suggests such things as courage, youth, and anger.

is a play that explores the concept of possession and identity. Lear is stripped of both. The word 'nothing' ripples through the text. Also in King Lear, there is a great deal of cruelty. There is also a great deal of tenderness and healing. Shakespeare repeats the word 'hands' throughout. The human hand is used both for cruelty and tenderness and we see images of physical cruelty with hands ripping and tearing, clawing and wounding. Regan, for example, rips Gloucester's eyes out with her hands. We also see hands raising someone up, blessing and stroking. 'Hands' is used for expressing both themes and, in addition, the theme of good versus evil.

In some plays Shakespeare uses a particular language device throughout. In Measure for Measure things are being balanced all the time. One of the main themes in the play is justice, and so we see everything being balanced against something else, reflecting that theme.

Recurring images is another device Shakespeare uses. In Romeo and Juliet there are recurring images that contrast light and darkness, reflecting young love doomed to death. Read more about Romeo and Juliet themes.

It's not possible to say definitively what Shakespeare's themes are, because each generation finds something that speaks to their generation. In previous centuries when European countries invaded and ruthlessly killed or exploited the inhabitants of the places they colonised that was universally regarded as acceptable. We don't accept that anymore and politicians now apologise for it. Scholars of the present generation now look at The Tempest with new eyes. Instead of Caliban being only a horrible and detestable monster, we see him also as the dispossessed and enslaved inhabitant of the island that belongs to him. We now take the question 'who does this island belong to?' seriously, which previous generations did not. The generations that follow us will find things in Shakespeare's plays that concern them deeply but of which we are not aware.

It's possible to see common themes that appear in all the plays. The four most prominent are: appearance and reality; change; order and disorder; and . Those were matters that deeply affected Shakespeare as he walked about and observed the world around him. In his declining years he became interested in the refreshment that the countryside brings as an antidote to the evils and corruption of city life. When he became the grandfather of a little girl he became interested in the redeeming effect that the youngest generation has on the oldest and we see that in plays like The Tempest, the Winter's Tale and Pericles, where there are all young girls who bring about the redemption of the corruption perpetrated by the old, worn-out generation, still pursuing their greedy ambitions.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Shakespeare Themes: What Are The & How Are They Used?✔️

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Perhaps the most celebrated expression of betrayal in Western culture is Julius Caesar's "et tu Brute." Stabbed by each... During the time that Shakespeare and his contemporary playwrights were writing their plays beliefs about good and evil were changing.... Hatred is one of the most powerful emotions, and a great driver of action in drama.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Some William Shakespeare quotes are known for their beauty, some Shakespeare quotes for their everyday truths and some for their wisdom.

As the most quoted English writer, Shakespeare created more than his fair share of famous quotes. We often talk about Shakespeare's quotes as things the wise Bard is saying to us, but we should remember that some of his wisest words are spoken by his biggest fools. For example, both 'neither a borrower nor a lender be,' and 'to thine own self be true' are from the foolish, garrulous and quite disreputable Polonius in Hamlet.

Whilst it's hard to definitively say which are the most famous Shakespeare quotes, we've examined polls published around the world, combined these with feedback from website users, and added our own take on Shakespeare's words, and can now offer what we believe to be the 50 most famous Shakespeare quotes of all time (in no particular order!).

50 Of Shakespeare's Most Famous Quotes

2. 'All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.'
(As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7) (Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2) (Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2) (Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2) (Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1) (Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 1) (Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2) (Henry IV, Part 1, Act 5, Scene 4) (The Merchant of Venice, Act 2, Scene 7) (Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2) (Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 1) (Richard III, Act 5, Scene 4)
(Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5)

17. 'Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.'
(A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 1, Scene 1) (Henry IV, Part 2, Act 3, Scene 1) (Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2)
21. 'This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle... This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.'
(Richard II, Act 2, Scene 1) (Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2)
23. 'Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.'
(Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 5)
24. 'Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.'
(Julius Caesar, Act 2, Scene 2)
25. 'Full fathom five thy father lies, of his bones are coral made. Those are pearls that were his eyes. Nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange.'
(The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2)
26. 'A man can die but once.'
(Henry IV, Part 2, Act 3, Part 2)
27. 'How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!'

28. 'Frailty, thy name is woman.'
(Hamlet Act 1, Scene 2)
29. 'If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?'
(The Merchant of Venice, Act 3, Scene 1)
30. 'I am one who loved not wisely but too well.'

31. 'We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.'
(The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1)
32. 'Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.'
(Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5)
33. 'To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.'
(Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3) (Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 1)
35. 'There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.'
(Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2)
36. 'Nothing will come of nothing.'
(King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1)
37. 'The course of true love never did run smooth.'
(A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 1, Scene 1)
38. 'Lord, what fools these mortals be!'
(A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 1, Scene 1)
39. 'The fault, dear Brutus, lies not within the stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.'
(Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2)
40. 'Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.'

41. 'The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interrèd with their bones.'
(Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2)
42. 'But, for my own part, it was Greek to me.'
(Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2)
43. 'Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.'
(Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3)
44. 'We know what we are, but know not what we may be.'
(Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5)
45. 'Off with his head!'
(Richard III, Act 3, Scene 4) (The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 2)
47. 'This is very midsummer madness.'
(Twelfth Night, Act 3, Scene 4)
48. 'Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.'
(Much Ado About Nothing, Act 3, Scene 1)
49. 'I cannot tell what the dickens his name is.'
(The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 3, Scene 2)
50. 'We have seen better days.'
(Timon of Athens, Act 4, Scene 2)
51. 'I am a man more sinned against than sinning.'
(King Lear, Act 3, Scene 2)
What do you think - any famous Shakespeare quotes missing from the above list? As per his own words, Shakespeare may not have been born great, but he certainly managed to achieve greatness! Let us know your favourite William Shakespeare quotes in the comments section below.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Shakespeare Quotes: 55 Famous Quotes From The Bard ✔️

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Read 55 of Shakespeare's most famous quotes. Some William Shakespeare quotes are famous for their beauty some for their everyday truth. Quote 1:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human
by Harold Bloom
Written by the preeminent literary critic Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human offers a comprehensive reading of each of Shakespeare's plays.

Shakespeare's Words: A Glossary and Language Companion
by David Crystal and Ben Crystal
This vital guide to understanding Shakespeare's language contains over 14,000 words that might be unfamiliar or ambiguous to the modern reader.

Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist
by Lukas Erne
In this groundbreaking study, Lucas Erne argues that Shakespeare wrote not only for the stage but also for the page, abridging his theatrical texts into shorter "literary" texts with a readership in mind.

Shakespeare After All
by Marjorie Garber
Shakespeare After All draws from author Marjorie Garber's popular lecture courses at Harvard and Yale.

Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
by Stephen Greenblatt
Will in the World, written by Harvard professor and literary critic Stephen Greenblatt, is a biography aimed at answering the question of how Shakespeare became Shakespeare.

The Eloquent Shakespeare: A Pronouncing Dictionary for the Complete Dramatic Works with Notes to Untie the Modern Tongue
by Gary Logan
Subtitled "A Pronouncing Dictionary for the Complete Dramatic Works with Notes to Untie the Modern Tongue," this book aims to help modern actors and readers speak Shakespeare's language with ease.

The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606
by James Shapiro
In The Year of Lear, preeminent Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro details the events of 1606 and shows how they affected Shakespeare and shaped the three great tragedies he wrote that year.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Few poets have been as essential, as influential to the evolution of a language-both the written word and the spoken tradition-as William Shakespeare was to English. His poems, particularly his sonnets, which became renowned for their particular form and human themes (love, death, time, memory, etc.), are still studied, memorized, recited, and enjoyed; his plays, likewise, are classics.

# data[].attributes.headline
A few of the well-known quotes in The Merchant of Venice, in order of appearance in the play

# data[].attributes.subject
A few of the well-known quotes in The Merchant of Venice, in order of appearance in the play

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Here we've listed a few of the well-known quotes in The Merchant of Venice, in order of appearance in the play.

Peter O'Toole as Shylock. The Merchant of Venice (1960) directed by Michael Langham.

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano,
A stage where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.
(Antonio, Act 1 Scene 1)

God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man.
(Portia, Act 1 Scene 2)

I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following, but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you. What news on the Rialto?
(Shylock, Act 1 Scene 3)

How like a fawning publican he looks!
I hate him for he is a Christian,
But more, for that in low simplicity
He lends out money gratis and brings down
The rate of usance here with us in Venice.
(Shylock, Act 1 Scene 3)

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
(Antonio, Act 1 Scene 3)

I like not fair terms and a villain's mind.
(Bassanio, Act 1 Scene 3)

Mislike me not for my complexion,
The shadowed livery of the burnished sun.
(Morocco, Act 2 Scene 1)

It is a wise father that knows his own child.
(Lancelet, Act 2 Scene 2)

In the twinkling.
(Lancelet, Act 2 Scene 2)

But love is blind, and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit.
(Jessica, Act 2 Scene 6)

All that glisters is not gold.
(Morocco, Act 2 Scene 7)

Young in limbs, in judgement old.
(Morocco, Act 2 Scene 7)

The portrait of a blinking idiot.
(Aragon, Act 2 Scene 9)

Let him look to his bond.
(Shylock, Act 3 Scene 1)

If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
(Shylock, Act 3 Scene 1)

Tell me where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart or in the head?
(Singer, Act 3 Scene 2)

I never knew so young a body with so old a head.
(Duke, Act 4 Scene 1)

The quality of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
(Portia, Act 4 Scene 1)

I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
(Jessica, Act 5 Scene 1)

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted.
(Lorenzo, Act 5 Scene 1)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Famous quotes | The Merchant of Venice | Royal Shakespeare Company

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Here we've listed a few of the well-known quotes in The Merchant of Venice, in order of appearance in the play. I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano, A stage where every man must play a part, And mine a sad one.

# data[].attributes.headline
Who is Shylock? | The Merchant of Venice (2022) | Winter 2021/22 | Shakespeare's Globe

# data[].attributes.subject
Who is Shylock? | The Merchant of Venice (2022) | Winter 2021/22 | Shakespeare's Globe

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Who is Shylock? | The Merchant of Venice (2022) | Winter 2021/22 | Shakespeare's Globe

# data[].attributes.headline
Act 4 Scene 1 | The Merchant of Venice | 2015 | Royal Shakespeare Company

# data[].attributes.subject
Act 4 Scene 1 | The Merchant of Venice | 2015 | Royal Shakespeare Company

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Act 4 Scene 1 | The Merchant of Venice | 2015 | Royal Shakespeare Company

# data[].attributes.headline
60 Famous quotes and sayings by William Shakespeare

# data[].attributes.subject
60 Famous quotes and sayings by William Shakespeare

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Be Inspired from Famous Quotes | Bliss Quote

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
60 Famous quotes and sayings by William Shakespeare. Here are the best William Shakespeare quotes that will cover topics about life knowledge, wisdom, love, etc. William Shakespeare is a well-known English poet, writer, actor, playwright, and also called the world's greatest dramatist of all time. May these quotes by William Shakespeare be your tool to find the wisdom and knowledge that you are looking for, that will be able to inspire your life positively. Share these famous William Shakespeare quotes with your friends, family, and loved ones to inspire them as well.

1. Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. - William Shakespeare

2. When we are born, we cry that we come to this great stage of fools. - William Shakespeare

3. Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit. - William Shakespeare

4. Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for . - William Shakespeare

5. Go to your bosom; Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know. - William Shakespeare

6. I wish my horse had the speed of your tongue. - William Shakespeare

7. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? - William Shakespeare

8. I must be cruel only to be kind; Thus bad begins and worse remains behind. - William Shakespeare

9. Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it is morrow. - William Shakespeare

10. Hell is empty and all the devils are here. - William Shakespeare

11. Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale, vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man. - William Shakespeare

12. Fishes live in the sea, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones. - William Shakespeare

13. Speak low, if you speak love. - William Shakespeare

14. O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil. - William Shakespeare

15. To be, or not to be: that is the question. - William Shakespeare

16. With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come. - William Shakespeare

17. The object of Art is to give life a shape. - William Shakespeare

18. Love me or hate me, both are in my favor... If you love me, I'll always be in your heart... If you hate me, I'll always be in your mind. - William Shakespeare

19. The expectation is the root of all . - William Shakespeare

20. Love is the greatest of dreams, yet the worst of nightmares. - William Shakespeare

21. All's well if all ends well. - William Shakespeare

22. One may smile, and smile, and be a villain. - William Shakespeare

23. Nothing will come of nothing: speak again. - William Shakespeare

24. What's done cannot be undone. - William Shakespeare

25. A young woman in love always looks like patience on a monument smiling at grief. - William Shakespeare

26. People's good deeds we write in water. The evil deeds are etched in brass. - William Shakespeare

27. Better three hours too soon than a minute too late. - William Shakespeare

28. No legacy is so rich as honesty. - William Shakespeare

29. When sorrows come, they come not single spies, But in battalions. - William Shakespeare

30. The course of true love never did run smooth. - William Shakespeare

31. I like this place and could willingly waste my time in it. - William Shakespeare

32. Love is heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold, sick and healthy, asleep and awake- its everything except what it is! - William Shakespeare

33. The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool. - William Shakespeare

34. Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind. - William Shakespeare

35. Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them. - William Shakespeare

36. It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves. - William Shakespeare

37. is very slow for those who wait, Very fast for those who are scared, Very long for those who lament, Very short for those who celebrate, But for those who love, time is eternal. - William Shakespeare

38. There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. - William Shakespeare

39. If you love and get hurt, love more. If you love more and hurt more, love even more. If you love even more and get hurt, even more, love some more until it hurts no more... - William Shakespeare

40. Nothing will come of nothing; we must dare mighty things. - William Shakespeare

41. Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt. - William Shakespeare

42. A light heart lives long. - William Shakespeare

43. Neither a borrower nor a lender is: For loan oft loses both itself and friend. - William Shakespeare

44. 'Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers. - William Shakespeare

45. Brevity is the soul of wit. - William Shakespeare

46. A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool. - William Shakespeare

47. It is the stars, The stars above us, govern our conditions. - William Shakespeare

48. There are three people in yourself: Who people think you are, Who you think you are, and who you really are. - William Shakespeare

49. Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires. - William Shakespeare

50. is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven. - William Shakespeare

51. Don't waste your love on somebody, who doesn't value it. - William Shakespeare

52. To weep is to make less the depth of grief. - William Shakespeare

53. Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs. - William Shakespeare

54. And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. - William Shakespeare

55. Listen to many, speak to a few. - William Shakespeare

56. So wise so young, they say, do never live long. - William Shakespeare

57. All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages. - William Shakespeare

58. Do not swear by the moon, for she changes constantly. Then your love would also change. - William Shakespeare

59. Go wisely and slowly. Those who rush stumble and fall. - William Shakespeare

60. If we are true to ourselves, we can not be false to anyone. - William Shakespeare

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
60 Famous quotes and sayings by William Shakespeare

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
60 Famous quotes and sayings by William Shakespeare. Here are the best William Shakespeare quotes that will cover topics about life knowledge, wisdom, love, etc. William Shakespeare is a well-known English poet, writer, actor, playwright, and also called the world's greatest dramatist of all time.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Biographies interactive worksheet for 5. You can do the exercises online or download the worksheet as pdf.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Cloze tests online worksheet for Grade 7. You can do the exercises online or download the worksheet as pdf.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Viewing- reading questionnaire interactive worksheet for Intermediate /A2. You can do the exercises online or download the worksheet as pdf.

# data[].attributes.headline
Shakespeare Summarized: The Merchant of Venice on Edpuzzle

# data[].attributes.subject
Shakespeare Summarized: The Merchant of Venice on Edpuzzle

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Shakespeare Summarized: The Merchant of Venice

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Edpuzzle video lesson. Make any video your lesson. Take a video and crop it, add your voice or embed questions at any point.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
William Shakespeare’s Life and Times: A Glossary of Common Shakespearean Words | SparkNotes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Shakespeare frequently uses words which no longer exist in modern English, or which have changed their meaning since Shakespeare’s day. Here are some of…

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Shylock

A Jewish moneylender in Venice. Angered by his mistreatment at the hands of Venice's Christians, particularly Antonio, Shylock schemes to eke out his revenge by ruthlessly demanding as payment a pound of Antonio's flesh. Although seen by the rest of the play's characters as an inhuman monster, Shylock at times diverges from stereotype and reveals himself to be quite human. These contradictions, and his eloquent expressions of hatred, have earned Shylock a place as one of Shakespeare's most memorable characters.

Read an in-depth analysis of Shylock.

Portia

A wealthy heiress from Belmont. Portia's beauty is matched only by her intelligence. Bound by a clause in her father's will that forces her to marry whichever suitor chooses correctly among three caskets, Portia is nonetheless able to marry her true love, Bassanio. Far and away the most clever of the play's characters, it is Portia, in the disguise of a young law clerk, who saves Antonio from Shylock's knife.

Read an in-depth analysis of Portia.

Antonio

The merchant whose love for his friend Bassanio prompts him to sign Shylock's contract and almost lose his life. Antonio is something of a mercurial figure, often inexplicably melancholy and, as Shylock points out, possessed of an incorrigible dislike of Jews. Nonetheless, Antonio is beloved of his friends and proves merciful to Shylock, albeit with conditions.

Read an in-depth analysis of Antonio.

Jessica

Although she is Shylock's daughter, Jessica hates life in her father's house, and elopes with the young Christian gentleman, Lorenzo. The fate of her soul is often in doubt: the play's characters wonder if her marriage can overcome the fact that she was born a Jew, and we wonder if her sale of a ring given to her father by her mother is excessively callous.

Read an in-depth analysis of Jessica.

Bassanio

A gentleman of Venice, and a kinsman and dear friend to Antonio. Bassanio's love for the wealthy Portia leads him to borrow money from Shylock with Antonio as his guarantor. An ineffectual businessman, Bassanio proves himself a worthy suitor, correctly identifying the casket that contains Portia's portrait.

Read an in-depth analysis of Bassanio.

Gratiano

A friend of Bassanio's who accompanies him to Belmont. A coarse and garrulous young man, Gratiano is Shylock's most vocal and insulting critic during the trial. While Bassanio courts Portia, Gratiano falls in love with and eventually weds Portia's lady-in-waiting, Nerissa.

Read an in-depth analysis of Gratiano.

Lorenzo

A friend of Bassanio and Antonio, Lorenzo is in love with Shylock's daughter, Jessica. He schemes to help Jessica escape from her father's house, and he eventually elopes with her to Belmont.

Read an in-depth analysis of Lorenzo.

Nerissa

Portia's lady-in-waiting and confidante. She marries Gratiano and escorts Portia on Portia's trip to Venice by disguising herself as her law clerk.

Launcelot Gobbo

Bassanio's servant. A comical, clownish figure who is especially adept at making puns, Launcelot leaves Shylock's service in order to work for Bassanio.

The prince of Morocco

A Moorish prince who seeks Portia's hand in marriage. The prince of Morocco asks Portia to ignore his dark countenance and seeks to win her by picking one of the three caskets. Certain that the caskets reflect Portia's beauty and stature, the prince of Morocco picks the gold chest, which proves to be incorrect.

The prince of Arragon

An arrogant Spanish nobleman who also attempts to win Portia's hand by picking a casket. Like the prince of Morocco, however, the prince of Arragon chooses unwisely. He picks the silver casket, which gives him a message calling him an idiot instead of Portia's hand.

Salarino

A Venetian gentleman, and friend to Antonio, Bassanio, and Lorenzo. Salarino escorts the newlyweds Jessica and Lorenzo to Belmont, and returns with Bassanio and Gratiano for Antonio's trial. He is often almost indistinguishable from his companion Solanio.

Solanio

A Venetian gentleman, and frequent counterpart to Salarino.

The duke of Venice

The ruler of Venice, who presides over Antonio's trial. Although a powerful man, the duke's state is built on respect for the law, and he is unable to help Antonio.

Old Gobbo

Launcelot's father, also a servant in Venice.

Tubal

A Jew in Venice, and one of Shylock's friends.

Doctor Bellario

A wealthy Paduan lawyer and Portia's cousin. Doctor Bellario never appears in the play, but he gives Portia's servant the letters of introduction needed for her to make her appearance in court.

Balthasar

Portia's servant, whom she dispatches to get the appropriate materials from Doctor Bellario.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
the merchant of venice free online study guide

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Merchant of Venice: Character List | SparkNotes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A list of all the characters in The Merchant of Venice. The Merchant of Venice characters include: Shylock, Portia, Antonio, Jessica, Bassanio, Gratiano, Lorenzo.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Shakespeare's Plays, Sonnets, and Poems | The Folger SHAKESPEARE

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Read Shakespeare's plays, sonnets, and poems for free from the Folger Shakespeare Library! Full text, plus summaries, illustrations, guides for reading, and more.