A Critic's Meta Review: 4/5
The Sonnets by William Shakespeare (REVIEW)
William Shakespeare (allegedly[1]) wrote one hundred and fifty four sonnets during his lifetime. Because of this, I have decided to choose one in particular to analyze - otherwise, I am going to be up well into the wee hours of the AM typing away while the sound of my roommate snoring to the latest original series from Netflix fills my ears like wax on a hot day.
Too much information? Nay - ‘tis only nature, my friends.
The sonnet I have chosen to discuss with you all today is none other than the most well known of all of Shakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnet 18.
The sonnet that, if you ever read it to a girl on a date, might end up resulting in an early fatherhood for you.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Nah, but for real, though - summer’s lease truly does hath too short a date.
There are some who dispute that Shakespeare actually ever existed at all, and that even if he did, there was no way he wrote all of those plays himself; these people postulate that the works that have been attributed to him were, in fact, authored by others, with the popular candidates being Sir Francis Bacon - a charge supported by Mark Twain and even Helen Keller, as well as the 17th Earl of Oxford Edward de Vere, a claim which is referred to as the “Oxfordian theory”. The debate over who exactly wrote all of these masterpieces has even made it onto the radar of the United States Supreme Court, with former justices Sandra Day O’Connor and John Paul Stevens both signing a widely circulated petition put forth by the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition, the very existence of which should further illustrate how contested of an issue this truly is. ↩︎
The more you know, kids.
It would be nice if you could extend the lease. That is one lease I certainly would not want to get out of (unlike my last one, which I am still in the process of trying to weasel my way out of...slowly but surely, man).
Ol’ Billy Shakes might not quite have been as impactful of an artist as, say, Kanye West, but he was certainly well within the vicinity of greatness around which we all strive to hover. He had a way with words, that’s for sure.
I remember having to memorize this sonnet for Honors English class. Well worth the effort.
Lindsey knows what I mean ;)