Shakespeare’s Sonnets
First Folio 1623
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The Music You’re Hearing

Harpsichord

Keyboard instruments like the harpsichord and the virginals filled homes and courts in Shakespeare’s England. He even wrote about someone playing one in Sonnet 128.

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Sonnet 98
Sonnet 18
Sonnet 116
This Month™  ·  Interactive Poetry Reader

Fallen Words

A game hidden inside a Shakespeare sonnet
William Shakespeare  ·  Sonnet 98  ·  Published 1609  ·  Grades 5 & up
Watch the poem. Some words are about to escape. Catch them and send them home.
Sonnet 98
From You Have I Been Absent in the Spring
From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dress’d in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer’s story tell:
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew,
Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose,
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem’d it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.
Words that fell from the poem
0 of 8 placed

The Secret Groups

Seasonsspring & winter: two seasons in one poem. Surrounded by spring but feeling winter inside. Why?
Rhyme pairsthing/spring, tell/smell, those/rose: three rhyme pairs. For tell, the partner smell stayed visible. For the other two, both words fell, so listen for the sound.
Naturerose, hue, proud: the splendor of the season, seen but not enjoyed. (Here proud means splendid, as in a flower's proud lap.)
The trickEvery missing word is something the world offers, and the speaker refuses. The gaps are the meaning.
All words returned.

Read it aloud now. Do you hear the two seasons pressing against each other? Shakespeare holds spring in one hand and winter in the other, and refuses both, because neither is you.

The Colour Code Revealed

Each colour marks a hidden group. Here’s what they mean.

Seasons
springwinter
spring and winter are the emotional poles. Spring is everywhere, yet the speaker feels winter. Absence inverts everything.
Rhyme pairs
thingtellthose
thing/spring, tell/smell, those/rose: one rhyme pair in each of three quatrains. Only smell stayed visible to help you; for thing/spring and those/rose, both partners fell, so the sound was your clue.
Nature
hueproudrose
hue, proud, rose: the natural world seen but refused. Here proud means splendid. Every flower and colour is only a shadow of the beloved.
The trick
Each gap was not just a blank. It was a refusal. Shakespeare built absence into the structure of the poem itself.
Sonnet 98
Sonnet 18
Sonnet 116
This Month™  ·  Interactive Poetry Reader

Fallen Words

A game hidden inside a Shakespeare sonnet
William Shakespeare  ·  Sonnet 18  ·  Published 1609  ·  Grades 5 & up
Watch the poem. Some words are about to escape. Catch them and send them home.
Sonnet 18
Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Words that fell from the poem
0 of 7 placed

The Secret Groups

Nature failssummer, shake, fade: things you will outlast.
The argumenttemperate & eternal: what thee has that summer never will.
Weathershines: the eye of heaven burning too hot. The natural world shown to be unreliable, and unable to match thee.
The trickgrow’st: you grow into eternal lines. The poem itself is the immortality promised.
All words returned.

The poem doesn’t just describe eternal life. It is the eternal life. Read the last line: So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. ‘This’ is the poem you just read.

The Colour Code Revealed

Each colour marks a hidden group. Here’s what they mean.

Nature fails
summershakefade
summer, shake, fade: nature’s vocabulary of decline. Listed so the contrast with thee lands harder.
The argument
temperateeternal
temperate and eternal win the argument. Temperate beats summer’s extremes. Eternal beats summer’s short lease.
Weather
shines
shines and dimm’d are opposites in the same quatrain: the eye of heaven brightest, then clouded over. The natural world shown to be unreliable.
The trick
grow’st
grow’st is the hinge of the poem. You don’t just live forever. You grow into the lines. The poem is the life. Shakespeare made the argument true by writing it.
Sonnet 98
Sonnet 18
Sonnet 116
This Month™  ·  Interactive Poetry Reader

Fallen Words

A game hidden inside a Shakespeare sonnet
William Shakespeare  ·  Sonnet 116  ·  Published 1609  ·  Grades 5 & up
Watch the poem. Some words are about to escape. Catch them and send them home.
Sonnet 116
Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.
Words that fell from the poem
0 of 10 placed

The Secret Groups

What love ISlove, mark, star: fixed, navigational, certain.
What love is NOTalters, bends, shaken: three words for weakness.
Forces that failtempests, sickle, doom: weather → time → death. All fail to move love.
The insultfool: love refuses to be time’s jester. The most defiant word in the poem.
All words returned.

Read the couplet: If this be error and upon me prov’d, / I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d. Shakespeare stakes everything, his entire body of work and love itself, on this argument.

The Colour Code Revealed

Each colour marks a hidden group. Here’s what they mean.

What love IS
lovemarkstar
love, mark, star: three images of certainty. Love names itself. Mark fixes space. Star guides across oceans. All say: love does not move.
What love is NOT
altersbendsshaken
alters, bends, shaken: all in the first half, building the negative case before the positive. Shakespeare defines love by what it refuses.
Forces that fail
tempestssickledoom
tempests, sickle, doom: weather, time’s blade, death. Love survives all three. The edge of doom is as far as existence goes.
The insult
fool
fool is the most charged word. Time has power over everything. But love will not be its jester. One word carries the entire defiance of the sonnet.
How to play: Click a word to select it, then click the blank where it belongs, or drag it straight there. Finish the sonnet to reveal what the colours mean.
Shakespeare
The sonnet is saved!

Magnificent work, good scholar.

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”

As You Like It, Act II · William Shakespeare

The Bard has another sonnet for you
Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?

Shakespeare
Brilliant!

The poem lives on, thanks to you.

“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.”

Hamlet, Act IV · William Shakespeare

One final sonnet awaits
Sonnet 116: Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds

Shakespeare
✦   ✦   ✦

Three sonnets saved!

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on,
and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

The Tempest, Act IV  ·  William Shakespeare

The Bard thanks you, good scholar.