It follows the typical rhyme scheme of this form, abab cdcd efef gg and is composed in a type of poetic metre called iambic pentameter based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions.

The seventh line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter: Following George Wyndham, John Bernard notes the neoplatonic underpinnings of the poem, which derive ultimately from Petrarch: the beloved's transcendent beauty is variously diffused through the natural world, but is purer at its source.

In support of his hypothesis that the person addressed in the sonnet was an actor, Oscar Wilde hypothesized that the poem's "shadows" refer to the young man's roles.

The last line, which is not evidently sarcastic, appears to contradict the tone of betrayal and reproach of many of the closest neighboring sonnets in the sequence as first presented.

This definition helps elaborate on Shakespeare's extended metaphor and wordplay, explaining that shadow is that which is not palpable as well as the reflection of the young man in all that is real.

In addition, Bate writes about how the poem could be interpreted in a way reminiscent of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, "In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Theseus says that lunatics, lovers, and poets are of imagination all compact- their mental states lead to kinds of transformed vision whereby they see the world differently from how one sees it when in a 'rational' state of mind," (Bate, p. 51).

This quote draws upon the theme of Shakespeare's attempt to materialize intangible emotions such as love or an aesthetic appreciation for beauty.

The metaphor of shadow was often employed to help explain the illusory quality of perception and the reality of forms, both by Renaissance Platonists and by Plato himself in his book, Symposium.

[5] Duncan Jones agrees and suggests that the word "but" at the beginning of the closing line radically changes all that has gone before and marks a turn to a more critical perspective.

Separation, Landry says, causes the poet's imagination to begin, "to find, or rather project, many images of the friend's beauty in his surroundings".

Francis Bacon in his essay, "Of Praise", explains a particular method of addressing kings and great persons with civility in which, "by telling men what they are, they represent to them what they should be".

Lewis notes that an established feature of praise verse in the Renaissance was that it, "hid advice as flattery and recommended virtues by feigning that they already existed".