ShmoopTube

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Edited at https://subtitletools.com

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by urns.

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They're all Grecian to us. [A cardboard with a smile hangs over the Monalisa painting]

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Yeah. We went there.

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All right, here's the poem. Read it. Weep. [Passage appears on screen]

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The word "overwrought" in line 42 acts as which of the following?

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And here are the potential answers.

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All right, so we need to look at line 42 and determine

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what the word "overwrought" is doing there.

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First, it'd be good to know what the word means in the first place. [The question along with options appears on the screen]

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It looks like "overweight," but we somehow doubt the writer's

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talking about portly maidens here. [Yin and yang sign spins on the screen]

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Uh, you know, the urn is only so big.

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The "over" prefix generally accentuates the word it's attached to, [Smiling angel and devil appears on the screen]

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so "overwrought" means very... something.

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We've probably seen the word "wrought" in "wrought iron," [Juicer splatters juice on canvas and creates a painting]

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which is iron that's been beaten and shaped.

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Well, basically, it's been through the ringer.

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Ding.

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So if the word "overwrought" is assigned to a person,

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it's saying something like, [A train transforms into a robot]

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"that person is very agitated or stressed out."

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But is that what it means here?

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Or are they trying to pull one over on us? [Smelter & forge and steam engine appears besides author]

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If we look at line 42,

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"Of marble men and maidens overwrought,"

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we could be talking about men and maidens who are stressed out.

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They certainly don't appear to have much hair left.

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But look at the next line,

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"With forest branches and the trodden weed;". [Authors waves from a train engine]

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So these maidens are overwrought with [Angry author throws skeleton from train]

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forest branches and weeds.

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In other words, they're overdecorated with their various [Robot kicks skeleton]

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twigs and whatnot.

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Either way, it's definitely an adjective and not a verb,

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so we can nix options D and E for sure.

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And we already established that it's the men and maidens the word is describing, [The author angrily points to skeleton and hugs train engine]

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so it looks like B is our answer.

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So, yeah, apparently people liked to dress in shrubbery back then.

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There's no accounting for taste. [Two hands hold together]

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[ say what? ]

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