SONNET #5

by: William Shakespeare

HOSE hours that with gentle work did frame

The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell

Will play the tyrants to the very same

And that unfair which fairly doth excel;

For never-resting time leads summer on

To hideous winter and confounds him there,

Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,

Beauty o'ersnowed and bareness everywhere.

Then, were not summer's distillation left

A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,

Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,

Nor it nor no remembrance what it was:

But flowers distilled, though they with winter meet,

Leese but there snow; their substance still lives sweet.

• Shakespeare Index - An index of articles on to the Elizabethan dramatist.
• All Sorts of Hamlets - A study of some of the most famous actors to tackle Shakespeare's most famous rôle.
• Biographical aspects of the Sonnets - Examines the worth of Shakespeare's sonnets in piecing together clues as to the nature of his romantic life.
• His Family and Education - Available biographical details of Shakespeare's early life.
• His Marriage and Relations with his Wife - Known facts of Shakespeare's relationship with Anne Hathaway.
• Shakespearean Blank Verse - Management of metre, pause, trisyllabic substitution and the redundant syllable.
• The Shakespeare-Bacon Theory - Analysis of the theory that the plays of William Shakespeare were not written by the man whose biography we are familiar with, but rather under pseudonym by Lord Chancellor Francis Bacon.
• Shakespeare Monologues - A collection of monologues for actors.
• Shakespeare's Coined Words - A study of words coined by Shakespeare which either have been, or deserve to be, adopted into common usage.
• William Shakespeare - A biography.
• William Shakespeare - A biographical account of the poet's life.
• William Shakespeare (1564-1616) - A biography, plus links to purchase all of his works currently in print.
• William Shakespeare Quotes - A collection of quotations from his plays.
• Purchase books by William Shakespeare