Shakespeare: The World as Stage

by Bill Bryson

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

What is unusual about these lines, and many others of an even more direct and candid nature, is that the person they praise is not a woman but a man.

Jonathan Bate quotes a couplet from Cymbeline, “Golden lads and girls all must, / As chimney sweepers, come to dust,”

jonathan Bates