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Representation of women in Shakespeare's plays
William Shakespeare's portrayal of women
Characterization of women in Shakespeare
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Shakespeare's My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun Many authors compose sonnets about women whom they loved. Most of these authors embellish their women's physical characteristics by comparing them to natural wonders that we, as humans, find beautiful. Shakespeare's "My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun" contradicts this idea, by stating that his mistress lacks most of the qualities other men wrongly praise their women for possessing. Shakespeare presents to one that true love recognizes imperfections and feels devotion regardless of flaws, while satirically expressing his personal thoughts on Petrarchan sonnets. Through the use of comparisons, the English sonnet and an anti-Petrarchan approach, he creatively gets his point across. "My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun" uses comparisons to express Shakespeare's idea of love as opposed to lust. A lustful man would focus on a woman's pleasing physical characteristics, such as white breasts, beautiful hair, red lips, and fragrant breath; however, Shakespeare's mistress possesses none of these great characteristics. Shakespeare, instead, uses metaphors to express her physical shortcomings. "Coral is far more red than her lips' red" (line 2) describes his mistress' faded lips. "If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head" (line 4) shows the coarse, unkempt and dark color of her hair. "And in some perfumes is there more delight than in the breath that from my mistress reeks." (Lines 7-8) expresses his mistress' dire need for a breath mint. These comparisons give one a vivid description of his mistress' lacking beauty, and sets one up for the couplet at the end of... ... middle of paper ... ...manner, making them focus primarily on the lacking, yet lustful, physical attributes of his mistress. When he writes "And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare as any she, belied with false compare." (lines 13-14) in the final couplet, one responds with an enlightened appreciation, making them understand Shakespeare's message that true love consists of something deeper than physical beauty. Shakespeare expresses his ideas in a wonderful fashion. Not only does he express himself through direct interpretation of his sonnet, but also through the levels at which he styled and produced it. One cannot help but appreciate his message of true love over lust, along with his creative criticism of Petrarchan sonnets. "My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun" truly shows why many regard Shakespeare as a literary genius.
Throughout this poem, Shakespeare uses romantic language to make the reader feel as if this poem was meant for them. To support his romantic language, he uses a rhetorical question and personification. His rhetorical question is in line 1; “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”. (Shakespeare). What he means by this quote is, he thinks his lover is as gorgeous as a summer’s day.
Closely related to subversive comparisons, Shakespeare also makes use of exaggerated similes. Unlike his contemporaries, Shakespeare introduces his Mistress in negative conventional terms. “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun / cor...
William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing Much Ado About Nothing is clearly a classic comedy; lots of wit, puns, a group of stupid characters (Dogberry and the Watch) and although there are complications during the middle Acts, everything turns out right in the end. The first scene contains a lot of witty jokes and uses puns to show that right from the start of the play it is a comedy. Messenger: 'And a good soldier too, lady. ' Beatrice: 'And a good soldier to a lady. ' Beatrice and Benedick appear to have a 'teasing relationship'.
The speaker uses metaphors to describe his mistress’ eyes to being like the sun; her lips being red as coral; cheeks like roses; breast white as snow; and her voices sounding like music. In the first few lines of the sonnet, the speaker view and tells of his mistress as being ugly, as if he was not attracted to her. He give...
This sonnet is exceptional since it portrays a different, a more comical view of the love towards a woman. At the time of Shakespeare, poets usually write about fair ladies with eyes are stars, roses cheeks and melodic voice etc. Here is am example of a typical poem praising the beauty of one’s love: My Lady's hair is threads of beaten gold; (contrast with “the wires grow on her head”) Her front the purest crystal eye hath seen; Her eyes the brightest stars the heavens hold; (contrast with “nothing like the sun”) Her cheeks, red roses, such as seld have been; (contrast with no such roses see I in her cheeks) Her pretty lips of red vermilion dye; (contrast with “coral is far more red than her lips”) Her hand of ivory the purest white; Her blush AURORA, or the morning sky.
Love in its purest form is the most unsurpassable of all emotions, requiring intense commitment, while simultaneously providing incomparable bliss. However, often the intense desire for these feelings produces a new emotion, lust, with a craving that gives priority to obtaining an objectified person, as opposed to a very real human. Lust can be further practically defined as the inability to place selfless love on a higher pedestal than selfish desire. Shakespeare explores these conflicting definitions of lust in his 129th sonnet, condemning his animalistic variations of lust that coexist with his desire for a genuine state of love. As opposed to following the traditional convention of idealizing a woman and her attributes, Shakespeare breaks the concordance and focuses on the dehumanizing effect of the woman’s attributes on his character.
Compared to the first few lines in the second sonnet: "My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun coral is far more red than her lips red" And this shocking feeling of offense and harshness continues through to line twelve in the second sonnet. However, there are some dark points in the first sonnet as well, as death is mentioned in line eleven "Nor shall death brag thou wandr'st in his shade" And "rough winds" in line three. However, how harsh and sincere these sonnets may be, both have the conclusions with the similar idea that Shakespeare loves his woman so much that he doesn't need to give her false comparisons to do with beautiful items or beautiful things that don't last forever - his love lasts for eternity in the sonnet: "So long as men can breath, and eyes can see So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."
At it’s heart, love is a chemical reaction. Norepinephrine, dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin work together to create a cocktail of passion, desire, and that heart-fluttering feeling of love. There are varying levels, of course, like there is with anything. Love that is short and fatal, and love that is long and everlasting. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a play by William Shakespeare, seeks to explore love in through a critical lense of reality, and the blur of the fantastic. Using a particular sprite as his tool, Shakespeare drafts and builds a dialectic surrounding love that never reaches completion; that is, he never answers the questions he composes through the play using metaphors, characters, and dialogue. Robin Goodfellow, also known as
...uty which is impossible for any woman or man to match. Campion's poem reflects this impossible ideal that society inflicts on us. This woman in There is a Garden in Her Face could never really live up to the image that the speaker has created of her. The image is false, and so is his love because he is only focusing on her outward appearance. The speaker in Shakespeare's sonnet clearly is not in love with his mistress' looks. Everything about her is contrary to society's standards, but he understands the absurdity of these standards and rejects them. There is more to his mistress than meets the eye, and that is why he truly loves her.
This poem speaks of a love that is truer than denoting a woman's physical perfection or her "angelic voice." As those traits are all ones that will fade with time, Shakespeare exclaims his true love by revealing her personality traits that caused his love. Shakespeare suggests that the eyes of the woman he loves are not twinkling like the sun: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun" (1). Her hair is compared to a wire: "If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head" (3). These negative comparisons may sound almost unloving, however, Shakespeare proves that the mistress outdistances any goddess. This shows that the poet appreciates her human beauties unlike a Petrarchan sonnet that stresses a woman's cheek as red a rose or her face white as snow. Straying away from the dazzling rhetoric, this Shakespearean poem projects a humane and friendly impression and elicits laughter while expressing a truer love. A Petrarchan sonnet states that love must never change; this poem offers a more genuine expression of love by describing a natural woman.
Indeed, the proliferation of potential successors becomes apparent in Act 1. The three sons of York prepare for the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross and as they converse, Richard spots ‘three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun’ (3HVI 2.1.25) in the sky above the battlefield. Wondering what the phenomenon might mean, Edward offers an interpretation:
Shakespeare’s themes are mostly conventional topics, such as love and beauty. Nevertheless, Shakespeare presents these themes in his own unique fashion, most notably by addressing the poems of beauty not to a fair maiden, but instead to a young man: ‘‘shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate” (book). Shakespeare points out that the youth’s beauty is more perfect then the beauty of a summer day. It is also “more temperate”, in other words more gentle, more restrained whereas the summer’s day might have violent excesses in store. At first glance of sonnet 18, it’s pretty much certain that one would think Shakespeare is referring to a woman, not a man. The idea of a man describing another man with such choice of words is always seen with a different eye. Several even stated that Shakespeare is homosexual. Whichever the case may be, Shakespeare painted beauty in the most original matter. He dared to do what everybody else didn’t, or maybe feared to, and accomplished his goal with flying colors. Besides, in his sonnets, Shakespeare states that the young man was made for a woman and urges the man to marry so he can pass on h...
Through the form of sonnet, Shakespeare and Petrarch both address the subject of love, yet there are key contrasts in their style, structure, and in the manner, each approaches their subjects. Moreover, in "Sonnet 130," Shakespeare, in fact, parodies Petrarch's style and thoughts as his storyteller describes his mistress, whose "eyes are in no way as the sun" (Shakespeare 1918). Through his English poem, Shakespeare seems to mock the exaggerated descriptions expanded throughout Petrarch’s work by portraying the speaker’s love in terms that are characteristic of a flawed woman not a goddess. On the other hand, upon a review of "Sonnet 292" from the Canzoniere, through “Introduction to Literature and Arts,” one quickly perceives that Petrarch's work is full of symbolism. However, Petrarch’s utilization of resemblance and the romanticizing of Petrarch's female subject are normal for the Petrarchan style.
The poem is not said to of been set in a particular place but I
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