Sonnet 105

William Shakespeare

Teacher card

Form: sonnet
Published: 1609, in Shakespeare's Sonnets
Length: 14 lines, 105 words, 1 word in 11 is long
Year band: Reading load: Years 7–8. A guide from word length, not a curriculum level.
Themes: love, wedding
Time: 5–10 min, depending on the activity

The text

Let not my love be call’d idolatry,Nor my beloved as an idol show,Since all alike my songs and praises beTo one, of one, still such, and ever so.Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,Still constant in a wondrous excellence;Therefore my verse to constancy confin’d,One thing expressing, leaves out difference.‘Fair, kind, and true,’ is all my argument,‘Fair, kind, and true,’ varying to other words;And in this change is my invention spent,Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.Fair, kind, and true, have often liv’d alone,Which three till now, never kept seat in one.

William Shakespeare (died 1616), Shakespeare's Sonnets (1609), lines 1807–1820 of Project Gutenberg ebook #1041. Public domain in Australia: the author died before 1955. Copied word for word and checked against the ebook.

What to do with it

One link and one task line for each activity. Send a student the one you want them to do, or print this page and hand it round; each link has a QR code.

Its lines are dealt for names in posy cardsin posy · 14 lines · about 5–10 min
Task for students (you can change the sentence before you print; nothing is saved)See how posy takes lines from this poem, then make a card for someone using them.
See how posy takes lines from this poem, then make a card for someone using them.
posy.popplepoetry.com/sources#sh-105

Send the whole hand-out

This page’s link. Students open it, read the text and pick what to do; nothing asks them to sign in.

Link for the whole text

https://popplepoetry.com/find/shakespeare-sonnet-105 · popplepoetry.com