Sonnet 94 Analysis

Shakespearean SonnetIt's called a sonnet, and it's written by Shakespeare. We know, we know—resist the urge to say duh. Then, allow Shmoop to help you out with a handy breakdown of this popular f...

The speaker of this poem sounds very conflicted in his attitudes towards the people he's talking about. For one thing, it's very hard to tell if he's trying to praise these powerful people or criti...

We start in extreme close-up, the camera focused directly on a mysterious group of people, "they." We don't know who "they" are, or exactly where "they" are, but as the camera pulls back, we start...

Not much, actually. Sonnet 94 is the 94th sonnet in a sequence of 154 sonnets, penned by the late, great William Shakespeare. We're betting ol' Willy wasn't feeling too creative when he slapped tha...

Tragic Outlook, Sonnet Form, ComplexityLike many of Shakespeare's Sonnets, Sonnet 94 is all hot and bothered about problems of death and decay. These ideas first appear in line 6, where we learn ho...

(8) Snow Line Sure, the actual words ol' Shakey uses here don't seem all that confusing. But you can read this poem in about eleventy billion different ways, so that's why we're bumping up the diff...

The last line of the poem, "Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds," also appeared in a play called The Reign of King Edward III, which some folks attribute to Shakespeare. Sure, he may hav...

PGThere isn't any explicit sex in this poem, but sometimes you see an undercurrent of desire that would definitely earn this poem a Parental Guidance rating. This mainly comes up in Lines 3-4, wher...