14 Words From 14 Lines Trivia Quiz

Answer:

This poem is one of the 154 first published in 1609 in a quarto volume that also contained the longer poem entitled "A Lover's Complaint". In format, it is a traditional "Shakespearean sonnet", consisting of three quatrains and a concluding couplet, with the rhyme scheme ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG. The metric scheme is that of iambic pentameter: ten syllables in each line, alternating between unstressed and stressed syllables.

The poem is a witty and honest subversion of traditional ideals of feminine beauty, as commonly used in romantic poetry of Shakespeare's time. Love-besotted poets would make much use of conventional images, extolling their snow-white breasts, coral-red lips, rose-red cheeks and perfumed breath.

Shakespeare mocks all this fanciful imagery, saying that his true love has black wiry hair and dark breasts, and that her breath, far from being perfumed, often reeks - an amusingly honest picture that conjures up a real woman, rather than some idealised figurehead. The concluding couplet sums up by pointing out, with some vehemence, that his beloved is as special as any of the exaggerated images of other women.

The references by Shakespeare to this anonymous woman's dark hair and skin (also referred to in other sonnets of the collection) have led to her being given the nickname "The Dark Lady of the Sonnets". She has never been reliably identified.

The phrase "Nothing like the sun" was used by Anthony Burgess as the title of his fictional biography of Shakespeare, published in 1964 to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth (23rd April 1564). It is also the name of a 1987 solo album by Sting, and a 2018 movie also known as "A Sweetest Kiss".