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There are references to a children's game called "bo-peep", from the 16th century, including one in Shakespeare's King Lear (Act I Scene iv), for which "bo-peep" is thought to refer to the children's game of peek-a-boo, [4] but there's no evidence that the rhyme existed earlier than the 18th century. [1]
Sonnet 115 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. [ 2 ] [ 3 ]
The earliest printed version of the rhyme is in Tommy Thumb's Little Song Book (c. 1744), but the rhyme may be much older. It may be alluded to in Shakespeare's King Lear (III, vi) [1] when Edgar, masquerading as Mad Tom, says:
"Monday's Child" is one of many fortune-telling songs, popular as nursery rhymes for children. It is supposed to tell a child's character or future from their day of birth and to help young children remember the seven days of the week. As with many such rhymes, there are several variants. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19526.
"Full fathom five" is the beginning of the second stanza of "Ariel's song", [3] better known than the first stanza, and often presented alone. It implicitly addresses Ferdinand who, with his father, has just gone through a shipwreck in which the father supposedly drowned. Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made;
Although many rhymes in the sonnets are imperfect in today's pronunciation, they were almost all perfect (or at least potentially so) in Shakespeare's day. The a rhymes, "open" and "broken" constitute a rare instance of an imperfect rhyme in the Sonnets, [ 2 ] though the same rhyme occurs in Venus and Adonis lines 47 and 48.
Through his signature rhyme scheme and careful word choice Shakespeare not only creates a darkly lustful sonnet that resonates with many of his readers, but also manages to establish a connection between many of his sonnets and therefore weave an intricate and sophisticated story with many derived and extrapolated components.
But it is the potential insight into the sonnets' chronology, through the relationship of "this" to "Time's pencil" and "my pupil pen", that is the focus of the debate: George Steevens regards the words as evidence Shakespeare wrote his sonnets as a youth; for T. W. Baldwin the phrase connects this sonnet to The Rape of Lucrece. [4]