The Role of the Fool in Shakespearean Drama
Shakespeare's fools are the plays' most privileged speakers — the only characters licensed to say what everyone else knows but cannot say aloud.
Read the Analysis ›“Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.”
Julius Caesar
What Is a Shakespearean Sonnet?
A Shakespearean sonnet is a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter, following a specific rhyme scheme and structure that…
Sonnet 6: Then Let Not Winter’s Ragged Hand Deface
Sonnet 6 presses the urgency of Sonnet 5 to its logical conclusion — if beauty must be preserved,…
The Shakespeare Authorship Question
The authorship question is the debate over whether William Shakespeare of Stratford actually wrote the plays attributed to…
Sonnet 5: Those Hours, That with Gentle Work Did Frame
Sonnet 5 is the first poem in the sequence to make time itself the subject rather than the…
Sonnet 129: The Expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame
Sonnet 129 is the most violent poem in the sequence — a controlled explosion of self-disgust at the…
Sonnet 30: When to the Sessions of Sweet Silent Thought
Sonnet 30 turns the act of remembering into a form of grief, only to find that the thought…