Sonnet 23

Sonnet 23 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare, and is a part of the Fair Youth sequence. In the sonnet, the speaker compares himself to an actor on stage who has frozen up and cannot speak, but he hopes that his love will understand him through this poem. It is of special interest because of its use of a metaphor drawn from acting, a figure that has led to much attention for what the poem might reveal about Shakespeare's attitude towards sonnet writing, love poetry, and his professions as a playwright and a poet.