Symbols, Imagery, Wordplay
Form and Meter
It's called a sonnet, and it's written by Shakespeare. We know, we know—resist the urge to say duh. Then, allow Shmoop to help you out with a handy breakdown of this popular form.This type of son...
Speaker
The speaker of this poem sounds very conflicted in his attitudes towards the people he's talking about. For one thing, it's very hard to tell if he's trying to praise these powerful people or criti...
Setting
We start in extreme close-up, the camera focused directly on a mysterious group of people, "they." We don't know who "they" are, or exactly where "they" are, but as the camera pulls back, we start...
What's Up With the Title?
Not much, actually. Sonnet 94 is the 94th sonnet in a sequence of 154 sonnets, penned by the late, great William Shakespeare. We're betting ol' Willy wasn't feeling too creative when he slapped tha...
Calling Card
Like many of Shakespeare's Sonnets, Sonnet 94 is all hot and bothered about problems of death and decay. These ideas first appear in line 6, where we learn how the powerful people are able to count...
Tough-o-Meter
Sure, the actual words ol' Shakey uses here don't seem all that confusing. But you can read this poem in about eleventy billion different ways, so that's why we're bumping up the difficulty here. I...
Trivia
The last line of the poem, "Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds," also appeared in a play called The Reign of King Edward III, which some folks attribute to Shakespeare. Sure, he may hav...
Steaminess Rating
There isn't any explicit sex in this poem, but sometimes you see an undercurrent of desire that would definitely earn this poem a Parental Guidance rating. This mainly comes up in Lines 3-4, where...