ShmoopTube

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Here’s your shmoop du jour, brought to you by Golden Locks.

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The three bears never stood a chance against such a gorgeous head of hair.

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What can be inferred about the poem's audience? And here are the potential answers…

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Okay, so this question wants to know for whom this poem was intended.

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Well… isn’t that just… us? Or… anyone who might pick up this poem?

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Possibly… but things are complicated because, just beneath the title, it says “To Queen Elizabeth.”

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Well, great. Now we feel like maybe we invaded her privacy.

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Like we opened her personal mail or something.

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So much for our clean criminal record. Looking over the answer choices, it appears

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that this question is really testing our understanding of the words “implicit” and “explicit.”

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You may have seen the word “explicit” as a warning… like, “explicit material:

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must be 18 to view.” And then there’s that really-hard-to-crack safety measure where

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they make you enter your birthdate.

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Not that… you’ve ever come across such a warning.

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Anyway, given the context clues, explicit basically implies something… not censored.

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So… open, obvious, in your face…

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While implicit is more subtle, implied… Well, the poem comes out and says this poem

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is to Queen Elizabeth, so that would be explicit…

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…but while he doesn’t mention us by name… in fact, it would be a little spooky if he did…

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he implicitly intended for the reading public to see this poem as well.

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Which is said quite nicely by option A - Queen Elizabeth is the explicit audience, but the

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general public is the implicit audience.

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Oh, and… don’t panic if you’re under 18 and forgot to check the box…

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this poem is suitable for all ages…

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