 Although unknown, Shakespeare’s accepted birthday is April 26,  Lived in Stratford, which was a major port city in Englad.  Married Anne Hathaway at the age of 18.

 Constructed of 14 lines  Contain 3 quatrains of abab rhyme scheme  Ends with a couplet  Therefore: ababcdcdefefgg rhyme scheme  Often written in a series A sonnet starts a story or theme  Next sonnet continues the theme or story.

 Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets  First 126 sonnet written to a boy “Plutonic love”  Sonnets 127 through 154 known as the “Dark Lady” sonnets Never named, only described.

 Form in which Shakespeare writes almost all of his work Sometimes wrote in paragraphs to differentiate characters in plays/depict intelligence or class  Stressed/Unstressed syllabus 5 combinations of the stressed/unstressed syllables in each line  Used for a purpose Mimics natural speech Easier to memorize because follows simple beat

 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 dimmed;  And every fair from fair sometime declines,  By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;  But thy eternal summer shall not fade,  Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,  Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest 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.