William Shakespeare, born in 1564 and died in 1616, wrote one hundred and fifty four sonnets in his lifetime. It is said that Shakespeare’s sonnets from 127 to 152 discuss the Dark Lady. Shakespeare appeared to have mixed feelings toward this Dark Lady who was not a portrayal of his actual wife. (Absolute Shakespeare, 2005) This paper will discuss Shakespeare’s Sonnet 138, “When my love swears that she is made of truth”. This Petrarchan sonnet has the rhyme scheme of ABAB, CDCD in the octave and EFEF, GG in the sestet. The fourteen lined sonnet made its first appearance in William Jaggard’s book titled “The Passionate Pilgrim”. This paper will argue against Edward A. Snow’s article on “Love of Comfort and Despair: A Reading of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 138”. Snow believes Sonnet 138 transforms “cynicism and despair” into an “affirmative and idealistic” vision of romance (Snow, 462). However, this paper argues against Snow’s opinion of Sonnet 138 with a different judgement on the Shakespearean sonnet. The argument is that the sonnet expresses the refusal to acknowledge the truth and it portrays the idea of a flawed relationship, as opposed to the picture-perfect love. The first two lines of the sonnet read “When my love swears that she is made of truth/I do believe her, though I know she lies” (Shakespeare, 1-2). In my opinion these two lines tell of the author’s knowledge of his mistress’s unfaithfulness. The author is aware of her deceitful ways; however he claims to ‘believe her’ and does not let her know that he is aware of her untruths. The language that Shakespeare uses expresses a content attitude with the situation of the relationship, that he has no desire to argue or tell his mistress of his knowledge. In contrast, Snow write... ... middle of paper ... ...the idea of a flawed relationship in Sonnet 138; this portrayal of love is different to what we are used to seeing in other poems and plays. Perhaps Snow failed to see that this different representation of love isn’t unpleasant or distressing, as long as the lovers are at ease with one another. Works Cited "Absolute Shakespeare." Absolute Shakespeare. N.p., 2005. Web. 20 Nov. 2013. . De Grazia, Margreta. “Interpreting Shakespeare’s Sonnets”. PLMA. 100.5 (1985). 810-812. JSTOR.Web. Mabillard, Amanda. "Shakespeare Online." Shakespeare Online. N.p., 2000. Web. 20 Nov. 2013. . McIntosh, Hugh. “The Social Masochism of Shakespeare's Sonnets”. JHUP. 50.1 (2010).109-125. JSTOR.Web. Snow, Edward A. “Love of Comfort and Despair: A Reading of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. ELH. 47.3 (2007).462-483 JSTOR.Web.
The imposition of the British aggressor is even made apparent through the structure of the work, the two sonnet form stanzas not only highlight the inadequacy of the loveless union, but with their Shakespearean rhyme scheme also imply the cultural dominance of English tradition. The use of half rhymes, such as ‘pulse’ and ‘burst’ or ‘pain’ and ‘within’ leaves the stanzas feel...
"Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal [but] which the reader recognizes as his own." (Salvatore Quasimodo). There is something about the human spirit that causes us to rejoice in shared experience. We can connect on a deep level with our fellow man when we believe that somehow someone else understands us as they relate their own joys and hardships; and perhaps nowhere better is this relationship expressed than in that of the poet and his reader. For the current assignment I had the privilege (and challenge) of writing an imitation of William Shakespeare’s "Sonnet 87". This poem touched a place in my heart because I have actually given this sonnet to someone before as it then communicated my thoughts and feelings far better than I could. For this reason, Sonnet 87 was an easy choice for this project, although not quite so easy an undertaking as I endeavored to match Shakespeare’s structure and bring out his themes through similar word choice.
Truth and honesty are key elements to a good, healthy relationship. However, in Shakespeare's Sonnet 138, the key to a healthy relationship between the speaker and the Dark Lady is keeping up the lies they have constructed for one another. Through wordplay Shakespeare creates different levels of meaning, in doing this, he shows the nature of truth and flattery in relationships.
To understand these two sonnets completely, one must first have a little background information concerning the sequence of the Sonnets and William Shakespeare's life. Shakespeare's series of Sonnets can be divided, "into two sections, the first (numbers 1-126) being written to or about a young man, and most of those in the second (numbers 127-154) being written to or about a dark woman" (Wilson 17-8). Because of the autobiographical nature of Shakespeare's Sonnets, these two characters are people from Shakespeare's actual life. The young man is Shakespeare's patron and Shakespeare has a "humble and selfless adoration [that] he feels for his young friend" (Wilson 32). The dark woman is Shakespeare's lover, a woman that infatuates him. These two people provide an emotional contrast for each other and Shakespeare's views on love. When these two meet, they have an affair, "behavior that, as the Poet [Shakespeare] is really deeply in love with the woman, causes him such distress, at times agony, as to introduce a note of tragedy into the series [of sonnets], . . ." (Wilson 33). The affair between the young man and the dark woman is the catalyst for Shakespeare's au...
Canfield Reisman, Rosemary M. “Sonnet 43.” Masterplots II. Philip K. Jason. Vol. 7. Pasadena: Salem Press, 2002. 3526-3528. Print.
...e speaker admits she is worried and confused when she says, “The sonnet is the story of a woman’s struggle to make choices regarding love.” (14) Her mind is disturbed from the trials of love.
In explication of sonnet 144 I would like to take a drastic change from what seems to be the common view of many in regards to who it is written about and the story behind it. I would like to state first of all that the straight facts about the sonnets are so few and that theories and debates are many. Doubt is cast over nearly every aspect of these sonnets. Arguments from when they were written, whom they were written to, why they were written, and even in many cases the question of who wrote them. The common thought of whom they were written to and why they were written has evolved as of late to reach a view of Shakespeare's sexual love affair with a young man and a mysterious mistress. While the contrast of the two persons is nothing new, the idea of the sexual love affair between Shakespeare and the young man rather than a love associated with mere friendship, has evolved to become the mainstream ideal. Sonnet 144 is often held as the most evidentiary sonnet for upholding the view of this love-triangle. I would like to offer what has been my interpretation of this sonnet based on my life's lens, as we should all have when reading poetry, and based on the historical known evidence of Shakespeare's life.
That means, the approaches of poet’s love remain the same. In one place, he portrays beauty as conveying a great responsibility in the sonnets addressed to the young man. The poet has experienced what he thinks of as "the marriage of true minds," also known as true love, that his love remains strong, and that he believes that it’s eternal. Nothing will stop their love, as in the symbols like all the ships, stars and stormy seas that fill the landscape of the poem and so on what can affect to their love. The poet is too much attracted with the young man’s beauty, though this indicates to something really bad behavior. But in another place, Shakespeare makes fun of the dark lady in sonnet 130. He explains that his lover, the dark lady, has wires for hair, bad breath, dull cleavage, a heavy step, pale lips and so on, but to him, real love is, the sonnet implies, begins when we accept our lovers for what they are as well as what they are not. But other critics may not agree with this and to them, beauty may define to something
Sonnet 130 is Shakespeare’s harsh yet realistic tribute to his quite ordinary mistress. Conventional love poetry of his time would employ Petrarchan imagery and entertain notions of courtly love. Francis Petrarch, often noted for his perfection of the sonnet form, developed a number of techniques for describing love’s pleasures and torments as well as the beauty of the beloved. While Shakespeare adheres to this form, he undermines it as well. Through the use of deliberately subversive wordplay and exaggerated similes, ambiguous concepts, and adherence to the sonnet form, Shakespeare creates a parody of the traditional love sonnet. Although, in the end, Shakespeare embraces the overall Petrarchan theme of total and consuming love.
William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 130”, was published in the mid-1590, and published with the rest of Shakespeare’s sonnets in 1609. The sonnet has fourteen lines, and divided into three quatrains and one couplet at the end. The rhyme scheme is cross rhyme, with the last two lines being couplets that rhyme. The sonnet compares between nature and the poets’ lover or mistress. He shows a more realistic view of his lover. Needless to say his significant other wasn’t physically attractive, yet he loved her inside beauty. Today we may use the term, “It’s not all about looks, but what’s inside”.
Much has been made (by those who have chosen to notice) of the fact that in Shakespeare's sonnets, the beloved is a young man. It is remarkable, from a historical point of view, and raises intriguing, though unanswerable, questions about the nature of Shakespeare's relationship to the young man who inspired these sonnets. Given 16th-Century England's censorious attitudes towards homosexuality, it might seem surprising that Will's beloved is male. However, in terms of the conventions of the poetry of idealized, courtly love, it makes surprisingly little difference whether Will's beloved is male or female; to put the matter more strongly, in some ways it makes more sense for the beloved to be male.
Canfield Reisman, Rosemary M. “Sonnet 43.” Masterplots II. Philip K. Jason. Vol. 7. Pasadena: Salem Press, 2002. 3526-3528. Print.
Spencer, Edmund. “Amoretti: Sonnet 54”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Gen. ed. David Simpson. 8th ed. Vol. 1. New York: Norton, 2006. 904. Print.
Steele, Felicia Jean. "Shakespeare's SONNET 130." Explicator 62.3 (2004): 132-137. Academic Search Complete. Web. 22 Nov. 2013.
Works Cited Shakespeare, William. The. The "Sonnet 18" The Longman Anthology of British Literature, compact edition. Ed. David Damrosch.