Sonnet 100 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.

Structure

Sonnet 100 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form ABAB CDCD EFEF GG and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The 5th line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:

<pre style="border:none;background-color:transparent;margin-left:1em"> × / × / × / × / × / Return, forgetful Muse, and straight redeem (100.5) The 3rd line exhibits a common metrical variant, the initial reversal, which is also present in lines 4, 7, and potentially 9: <pre style="border:none;background-color:transparent;margin-left:1em"> / × × / × / × / × / Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song, (100.3) The 13th line generates a somewhat complex rhythm, incorporating an initial and a mid-line reversal, as well as two non-ictic stresses ("love" and "wastes"): <pre style="border:none;background-color:transparent;margin-left:1em"> / × × / / × × / × / Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life; (100.13)