Guest columnist Beth Ann Fennelly analyzes Shakespeare's Sonnet 29 for its enduring relevance. The sonnet describes a speaker's journey from self-pity and envy to finding joy through love. Shakespeare ...

This poem appears to have been the first attempt that Burns made at sonnet writing. The sonnet, popularised in English by Shakespeare, is a fourteen-line poem. The subject matter is the verse form ...

Commonly, auditions require contrasting one-minute classical and contemporary monologues. Shakespeare’s well-known speeches remain stalwarts of dramatic literature, and for good reason. However, how ...

Shakespeare’s sonnets are considered some of the literary genius' most popular works, with some - such as Sonnet 18’s “Shall I compare thee to a summer's day” - becoming the best-known works in ...

TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online ...

We’ve all heard of Shakespeare’s sonnets. But how many of us have actually read them closely and really understood them? The poet Don Paterson begins by ’fessing up: “About a year ago, I decided that ...