Which Shakespearean sonnet is your favorite?

Answer 1

The one I enjoy teaching most is Sonnet 73, for each of its quatrains develops an image for ageing (fall of the year, twilight of the day, embers of a dying fire), each developed in beautiful detail, becoming closer and closer at hand (especially images from "bare ruin'd choirs" to "the ashes of his youth"). And the concluding couplet is, after all, the most recurrent theme in the sonnets: "This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, / To love that well which thou must leave ere long."

But my personal favorite -- the one I recited to my children until they wanted to scream at me, but then was read at their wedding -- is Sonnet 116.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Now that is poetry! And that is love!

And just to get your tongue around "within his bending sickle's compass come" is to defy the hissing reality of Time and old age.

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks.

Speaks to me. And for me.

[Thanks for asking this question, and reminding me to recite Sonnet 116 at our next family reunion. And hear all my children groan again.]

Answer 2

i'm a big fan of 130... let's see if i can remember it:

my mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun
coral is far more red than her lips' red
if snow be white, why then her breasts are dun
if hair be wires, black wires grow on her head.
i have seen roses damask'd, red and white
yet no such roses see i in her cheeks
and in some perfumes there is more delight
than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
i love to hear her speak, yet well i know
that music hath a far more pleasing sound
i grant i never saw a goddess go;
my mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
and yet by heaven i think my love as fair
as any she belied by false compare.

i had to look up one line, but i still love that poem.

Answer 3

Shakespeare Sonnet 60.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, where with being crown'd,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight.
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauties brow,
Feeds on the rarities of natures truth,
And nothing stands before his scyth to mow:
And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

Answer 4

Sonnet No.73:

"That time of year-thou may'st in me behold,
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare, ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire.
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie.
As the death bed whereon it must expire."

Answer 5

A Midsummer's Night Dream; I read it 2 years ago in my 7th grade class. I thought it would be boring, but it was actually a nice book.

Answer 6

The one that goes like this....love is still the most important force, isn't it?

Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
Some in their wealth, some in their body's force,
Some in their garments though new-fangled ill;
Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;
And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,
Wherein it finds a joy above the rest:
But these particulars are not my measure,
All these I better in one general best.
Thy love is better than high birth to me,
Richer than wealth, prouder than garments' cost,
Of more delight than hawks and horses be;
And having thee, of all men's pride I boast:
Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take
All this away, and me most wretched make.

Answer 7

Othello

Answer 8

the first one

Answer 9

None of 'em....

I don't care for Shakesphere one bit.

Answer 10

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