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Jul 31, 2015 · In Othello, William Shakespeare creates powerful drama from a marriage between the exotic Moor Othello and the Venetian lady Desdemona that begins with elopement and mutual devotion and ends with jealous rage and death. Shakespeare builds many differences into his hero…
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Click below to download Shakespeare’s full Othello play in PDF format for free, to read or share. You can also choose to read both Shakespeare’s Othello text and a modern English version of Othello online broken down by Act and Scene, or download an ebook version of Othello in modern English.
A Shakespeare Glossary. C. T. Onions. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1911. This text was converted to electronic form by professional data entry and has been proofread to a high level of accuracy. hide Dictionary Entry Lookup. Use this tool to search for dictionary entries in all lexica.
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In ‘Sonnet 130,’ William Shakespeare(Bio | Poems) contrasts the Dark Lady’s looks with the conventional hyperboles used in contemporary sonnets. The poetic speaker spends an inordinate amount of time describing his mistress down to the bare bones. The lines he spends on her description could very well symbolize his true adoration for the mistress a...
The meaning of this poem is interesting to understand. Though Shakespeare presents the main idea in the couplet, each section reveals the qualities of a lady the speaker loves. According to the poetic persona, his beloved is unlike the beautiful things of nature. She is as she is, not a lady with heavenly attributes. The speaker loves a lady with w...
Usually, most Elizabethan love poetry was written in the tradition of the Petrarchan sonnet. Contemporary poets, such as Philip Sidney and Watson, would use the Petrarchan sonnet for its poetic form, whereas in ‘Sonnet 130,’ Shakespeare mocks all the conventions of it. This sonnet consists of three quatrains, followed by a rhyming couplet. The rhym...
Shakespeare uses the following literary devices in his ‘Sonnet 130’. 1. Simile: It occurs in the first two lines: “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;/ Coral is far redder thanher lips’ red”. 2. Metaphor: Readers can find an implicit comparison between music and human voicein this line: “That music hath a far more pleasing sound”. 3. Hyperb...
The main theme of this piece deals with the conventional way of glorifying a speaker’s beloved and how Shakespeare looks at her lady love. It is a matter of seeing a human by her worth in one’s life. Using far-fetched comparisons to elevate a lady actually elongates the distance between two souls. Shakespeare says they are at a similar level. Their...
Lines 1–4
The poetic persona opens ‘Sonnet 130’with a scathing remark about his beloved’s eyes. They are “nothing like the sun”. As per Elizabethan tradition, such a comparison would have been almost expected. However, the poetic speaker continues to deride his beloved’s appearance by slashing any attempt to match her to things found in nature. If snow is white, her skin is not. Her breasts are rather “dun”, which is another word for grey-brown. Her hair is described as black wires.
Lines 5–8
The speaker’s beloved does not have a pleasant flush to her cheeks. He goes so far as to condemn the smell of her and the sound of her voice. The idea behind the Elizabethan tradition of love poetry was to elevate one’s love to a near unachievable plane, to make a mortal woman read in such a manner that she became elevated to near goddess status. The poetic speaker, rather than elevating her, brings her further down to earth.
Lines 9–12
As he continues to write, he admits that he loves to listen to her voice when she speaks. Yet he knows that the sound of music is more soothing than her voice. Still, he adores her voice as it is. He has never seen a goddess go, but his mistress walks on the ground. That line, in particular, seems almost openly satirizing the tradition itself, as it is well known that many Elizabethan poets would compare their lovers to things that mortals could not achieve, leaving the realm of humans to ent...
The difference between the Fair Youth and the Dark Lady sonnets is not merely in address but also in tone and mood: while the Fair Youth sequence uses mostly romantic and tender words, the Dark Lady sonnets are characterized by their overt references to sex and bawdiness. Scholars have attempted to illustrate the difference in tone and mood between...
Of the 154 sonnets that Shakespeare wrote throughout his lifetime, 126 were written to a figure known as the Fair Youth. The remaining 28 poems were written to the Dark Lady, an unknown figure in Shakespeare’s life who was only characterized throughout ‘Sonnet 130’by her dark skin and hair. The Dark Lady was called so for having those characteristi...
William Shakespeare(Bio | Poems) was born in 1564 in Stratford-Upon-Avon to an alderman and a glover. He is widely regarded as the greatest English writer of all time and wrote 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and 38 plays, though recently, another play has been found and attributed to Shakespeare. So little record of his private life exists ...
Readers who have enjoyed ‘Sonnet 130’ can consider reading the following Shakespearean sonnets from the Dark Lady sequence. You can also read more William Shakespeare poems. 1. ‘Sonnet 127: In the old age black was not counted fair’ – This Shakespearean sonnetexplores changing opinions on beauty and the use of makeup in contemporary times. 2. ‘Sonn...
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Act I - Scene 2. 'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet, To give these mourning duties to your father; But you must know, your father lost a father; That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound. In filial obligation for some term. To do obsequious sorrow. But to persever. In obstinate condolement is a course.
Feb 5, 2021 · In addition to having Shakespeare’s works available to read online, we are pleased to offer free downloadable files of the Folger Shakespeare texts in six digital formats: PDF, DOC (for Microsoft Word, Apple Pages, Apache Open Office, etc.), HTML, TXT (i.e., plain text), XML, and TEI Simple.
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Watch videos and fill in PEE grids to learn more about Shakespeare's use of language. We analyse rhetorical speech and devices, look at imagery and explore key themes.
