Shakespeare's Ideas About Love in His Sonnets
The two sonnets Shall I Compare Thee and Let Me Not are by William
Shakespeare. Love is the main theme of both sonnets. Shall I Compare
Thee is written for Shakespeare's love, and it is more personal and
cheerful. He takes apart the greatness of a summer's day and compares
it to the subject of the poem, but the subject (whom we assume is a
'she') is always more divine and she is the most beautiful thing he
has ever seen. The sonnet states that the subject is "…more lovely and
more temperate…" than the finest summer's day. Let Me Not is a
philosophical interpretation of love, and implies that this is what
love should be like. In the end Shakespeare almost dares the reader to
challenge him about what he has written and declares that if he is
wrong then "…I never writ, nor man ever loved." The aim of this essay
is to illustrate how Shakespeare express' his ideas about love in
these two sonnets.
Shall I Compare Thee and Let Me Not are typical Shakespearean sonnets.
They begin with twelve lines of quatrains then ends with a rhyming
couplet. There are four lines to each quatrain, and three quatrains
before the couplet. The quatrains rhyme every other line. The first
quatrain of Let Me Not states that true love can never change: "…love
is not love which alters when alteration findes…" In the second
quatrain he uses the term "wandring barke" to discuss how love guides
the lost and the lonely. Even though we get old and die, true love
will sustain is what the third quatrain is about when he says, "…love
not alters not with his breefe houres and weekes but beares it out
even to the...
... middle of paper ...
...this by saying "Thy eternall Sommer shall not
fade" and makes it more romantic. The beauty of summer reinforces her
beauty in the poem, because she is so much more beautiful than a
summer's day and he is admiration of her beauty.
Both poems convey love in different ways. Shall I Compare Thee is more
light hearted and romantic and is mainly about confessing how much
love he has for a certain woman. Let Me Not however is more serious
and philosophical but also romantic in the way that he is stating how
love should be, what love is, and what love is not. I prefer Shall I
Compare Thee to Let Me Not because Shall I Compare Thee is more
cheerful and happy and the love that he claims to the person in the
sonnet is passionate. Let Me Not is about love in general, Shall I
Compare Thee is to a lover and is the ideal love poem.
Romeo and Juliet’s first meeting is very poetic and metaphorical in the play. Their encounter occurs at the Capulets’ party in the evening. Romeo sees Juliet and immediately falls head over heels for her. Once he comprehends his feeling of love for her, he speaks of his admiration for her, praising, “Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight,/ For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night” (1.5.59–60). Romeo then walks over to Juliet at the end of the dance, and him and her begin to exchange words in beautiful sonnet form. While he professes his love for her, he compares himself to a pilgrim and depicts Juliet as a saint, explaining that if he kissed her it would rid him of his sin. Juliet counters and tells him, “For saints
Lust and Love in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 and Campion’s There is a Garden in Her Face
Holy Sonnet XV deals with the question of reciprocal love that runs throughout Donne’s religious poetry. The Sonnet is an address of the speaker’s mind to the speaker’s soul; it is a meditation on the Trinity and man’s relationship to God. The poem’s form and the multi-layered conflation throughout expound upon the nature of the Trinity. The theme of humility in reciprocal religious love or receiving and understanding God’s glory (as Donne understood it) runs throughout the poem. This allows the speaker’s soul to understand his own need for humility in order to love god fully. Donne uses the Sonnet form cunningly in this poem; the formal divisions of the Sonnet reflect the trinity, with three four-line sections, while the inner workings of the poem expound upon God’s love for mankind and the need for humility. The poem’s rhyme scheme is abba/abba/cddc/ee. This formally divides the poem into three four part sections that move from the spiritual to the physical downward through the Trinity, increasing tangibility with regard to the physical and allowing the speaker to achieve a closer relationship with God through Christ.
represented in the play, too. In this term paper I will try to give a
Shakespeare's Sonnet 116, denying Time's harvest of love, contains 46 iambic, 15 spondaic, 6 pyrrhic, and 3 trochaic feet. Like the varying magnitudes of stars that distinguish the sky's constellations, infused with myths describing all degrees and types of love, the spondaic, trochaic, and pyrrhic substitutions create a pattern of meaning that can be inferred by the discerning eye and mind. Shakespeare emphasizes his denial of the effects of Time on love by accenting "not" in lines 1, 2, 9, and 11, and "no" in lines 5 and 14. The forceful spondees at the beginning and the regular iambic feet at the end of each quatrain progressively build the poet's passionate rejection of love's transience. Quatrains 1 and 3, declaring what love cannot be, enfold his definition of love in Quatrain 2. The spondee, "It is," draws attention to the word "star" and the poem's essential metaphor, equating love and the North Star, at the poem's heart in lines 7 and 8. This figure of speech implies that while one can feel the intensity of one's love, i.e. measur...
this poem. I believe it is mainly what the poem is about. To make the
In human society, people remain searching others who could complement themselves and feel love with each other. Love, a strong emotion of human beings, is hard to be defined. It is born into our lives. Couples, those people with love, could be strong and powerful when facing their difficulties and happiness in their life. We can see the great about love, but what about the nature of love? What is the reason that a person needs another person to complete him/herself? Plato, the Greek philosopher, who thinks love is not just sexual and forms the love as a minds and intellects communication, creates a metaphor in “The Speech of Aristophanes” by comparing the Aristophanes’ story with real human beings to explain his own answer of this question.
In every relationship there is always a back story to be told about how they met each other, maybe their first date, first kiss, their first time holding hands, and many more ways. The story will always be different, that is what makes it special. These things striking between the two is called courtship. Based on Merriam-Webster dictionary courtship refers to, the activities that occur when people are developing a romantic relationship that could lead to marriage or an attempt to convince someone to support you. Since the 17th century the way that someone’s love is shown to someone else has changed a great deal. “Your hand in my hand, my soul inspired, my heart in bliss, because we go together.” Poetry places romance on a pedestal, specifically
A sonnet is a lyric poem of fourteen lines, following one of several set of rhyme-schemes. Critics of the sonnet have recognized varying classifications, but the two characteristic sonnet types are the Italian type (Petrarchan) and the English type (Shakespearean). Shakespeare is still nowadays seen as in idol in English literature. No one can read one of his works and be left indifferent. His way of writing is truly fascinating. His sonnets, which are his most popular work, reflect several strong themes. Several arguments attempt to find the full content of those themes.
has the gentle heart of a woman but is not inconsistent as is the way
Shakespeare’s sonnet 130 is a sonnet much different than the normal love sonnets of that time. A well-known re-occurring them in Shakespeare’s sonnets is love. Shakespeare’s sonnet 130 can be interpreted many different ways. Sonnet 130 describes what love is to Shakespeare by making the poem a joke in order to mock other poets. In sonnet 130, Shakespeare spoke of a courtly love. Shakespeare goes against the usual style of courtly love writing in this sonnet. “In comparison to Petrarch’s Sonnet 90 and Shakespeare’s own Sonnets 18 and 20, Sonnet 130 is a parody of courtly love, favoring a pastoral love that is austere in its declaration, yet deep-rooted in sincerity” (Dr. Tilla Slabbert 1). Sonnet 130 mocks the men who use the traditional
Sonnet number one hundred sixteen and number one hundred thirty provide a good look at what Shakespeare himself defines as love. The former describes the ever-enduring nature of true love, while the latter gives an example of this ideal love through the description of a woman who many call the “Dark Lady”. Through the combination of these two sonnets Shakespeare provides a consistent picture of what love should be like in order to “bear it out even to the edge of doom”(116, Ln: 12). To me the tern “maker” used by Sir Philip Sidney to describe the poets first and foremost duty would refer to the creation process, which produces the end text. The discourse of the poet is to take an emotion or event they up to that point was purely felt, and make it into flowing words, which in turn reproduce the initial emotion. The poet is therefore a “maker” of poems as well as emotion. This emotion would not be present however if the poet were not human experiencing the ups and downs of everyday life. Therefore I feel that the poet is first and foremost human, and therefore susceptible to human needs, feelings, and emotions, and secondly a maker.
William Shakespeare's sonnets deal with two very distinct individuals: the blond young man and the mysterious dark-haired woman. The young man is the focus of the earlier numbered sonnets while the latter ones deal primarily with the dark-haired woman. The character of the young man and a seductive mistress are brought together under passionate circumstances in Shakespeare's "Sonnet 42." The sexual prowess of the mistress entangles both Shakespeare and the young man in her web of flesh. This triangular sonnet brings out Shakespeare's affection for both individuals. His narcissistic ideal of delusional love for the young man is shown through diction and imagery, metrical variation and voice, contained in three quatrains and one couplet.
Almost four hundred years after his death, William Shakespeare's work continues to live on through his readers. He provides them with vivid images of what love was like during the 1600's. Shakespeare put virtually indescribable feelings into beautiful words that fit the specific form of the sonnet. He wrote 154 sonnets; all of which discuss some stage or feature of love. Love was the common theme during the time Shakespeare was writing. However, Shakespeare wrote about it in such a way that captivated his reader and made them want to apply his words to their romances. What readers do not realize while they compare his sonnets to their real life relationships is that Shakespeare was continually defying the conventions of courtly love in his writings.
has a listener within the poem, but the reader of the poem is also one