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A sonnet is a kind of poem that has 14 lines. Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets with many themes, some of which are love, beauty, and morality. It is unsure who he wrote these poems to.
A sonnet is split up into 3 groups of 4 lines known as quatrains and the last two lines known as a couplet. Sonnet #40 is can be broken down like this:
1st quatrain:
Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all;
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;
All mine was thine before thou hadst this more.
2nd quatrain:
Then if for my love thou my love receivest,
I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest;
But yet be blamed, if thou thyself deceivest
By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.
I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,
Although thou steal thee all my poverty;
And yet, love knows, it is a greater grief
To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury.
Couplet:
Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,
Kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes.
Copyright © ProjectExplorer 2003-2006
Text: Nidia Medina
Image: Courtesy of Penguin Publishing