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Representation of women in Shakespeare
Love in shakespeares sonnets
Characterization of women in Shakespeare
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Shakespeare’s View on Love (A discussion on Shakespeare’s views on love through his sonnets) Several of SHakespeare’s plays have many clashing themes on love. Romeo and Juliet, shows us that love conquers everything, true love is real, and that you have the right to choose who you love. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream has similar views on love while adding the idea of love at first sight. Throughout his sonnets, you can imply several views on love and it could even be taken to the point of people have the right to love who they wish and gender isn’t a concern. Out of the 154 sonnets, the one that has the most obvious view on love is sonnet 18 and that view is when you love someone, in your eyes, they become more beautiful than even …show more content…
When Shakespeare is writing this sonnet he is constantly comparing this “woman” to a summer’s day. He continues on about how she is more beautiful than summer because she has no imperfects, while summer has several things wrong with it. Summer day’s are unpredictable and it can be implied that this woman is sometimes unpredictable as well. Summer is often hot, then rainy, or various of other combinations throughout a single day. If he is in fact, comparing summer to this woman, then she very well may be bipolar. It seems as if Shakespeare is noting all her faults and then later saying how he loves them and she is flawless. This leads us to the assumption that love is blind and therefore, Shakespeare is in love, but doesn’t know that because he’s in love, he is blind to her imperfections. It often happens in modern times, that you fall in love with someone who you are best friends with because you know them so well and you know all there flaws, therefore, when you two date, you become blind to what you know and see their imperfections as beauty. Whether this is true for Shakespeare or not, is up to each person to decide for …show more content…
If you love someone and you truly love them whole-heartedly, then you take their flaws and compare them to something worse to make their flaws seem obsolete. Shakespeare says “Thou art more lovely and more temperate: / Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May / And summer's lease hath all too short a date:” Sonnet 18, lines 2-4. He hasn’t said any rude things about her, yet it seems as though he may be writing this because, outside of the sonnets he did something to her that offended her and this is his apology. Saying she is more beautiful than a summer’s day is one thing, and she lasts a long time, while summer goes by all too quickly. Shakespeare clearly sees the woman as more extravagant than anything in the world, which by the way, would probably flatter every girl in the world. Although his lover may not be absolutely perfect, she is perfect for him, and that’s all he cares about. The youth that this sonnet is about, is previously mentioned when Shakespeare wished she would share her beauty with the world. All through the sonnets, Shakespeare is wishing to make the youth immortal so that this beauty in the world never has to
Shakespeare used little discretion within his sonnets and plays in regards to his expressions of desire. His sonnets tell the tale of what is believed to be a romantic interlude with a young male (Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 2011), but in Sonnet 130 Shakespeare espouses on the feminine form in explicit although unflattering, detail (2006. p. 507). . His description of his love is much kinder. One of Shakespeare’s most famous lines “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? /Though art more lovely and more temperate:” (2006, p. 499) is much more flattering and represents the desire he feel for another
...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.
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.
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
William Shakespeare’s sonnets are renowned as some of the greatest poetry ever written. He wrote a total of 154 sonnets that were published in 1609. Shakespearean sonnets consider similar themes including love, beauty, and the passing of time. In particular, William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 75 and Sonnet 116 portray the theme of love through aspects of their form and their display of metaphors and similes. While both of these sonnets depict the theme of love, they have significantly contrasting ideas about the same theme.
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.
There is a defining complication in the sonnet. “This centers on the ambiguity of the term “mistress” which could refer to a husband’s wife, or, as the Oxford English Dictionary suggests, could also mean “[a] woman loved and courted by a man; a female sweetheart” or “[a]woman other than his wife with whom a man has a long-lasting sexual relationship” (Gregory, 2). The poem does not specify if “my love” refers to the speaker’s mistress or to the speaker’s love, his feelings. Shakespeare could be implying that his feelings and his love, are equally as sacred as the supposed love of other lovers that his mistress wrongly compares him
Shakespeare uses many different methods of discourse to examine this theme of love. In both sonnets the lover is exerting his control over the narrator, but the narrator does not really mind being controlled in either sonnet. Both sonnets include many elements and references to time and waiting and all of these references relate to love by showing love’s long lifespan and varying strengths over time. The only major difference between the two sonnets lies in their addressing love. Sonnet 57 talks directly to it in a personifying manner, whereas sonnet 58 merely refers to it through other means. Through this variety of explorations of the theme of love, Shakespeare shows that love has many faces and ways of expressing itself.
The love that a person has for someone is not the same for other people. They can look at their love through nature or just by their beauty. Shakespeare has the ability to explain his love for someone by using nature as a reference. Looking at two of Shakespeare’s sonnets 18 and 130 explore the differences and similarities between one another. In Sonnet 18 and 130, both show Shakespeare’s knowledge in developing his love and respect.
Shakespeare’s plays are very drastic with how he ties love into them. Shakespeare always adds comedy or tragedy to any romance that might be taking place. For example in Twelfth Night, As You like It and Romeo and Juliet there is romance but he also puts comedy in there so love is not that easy. In the play Othello he makes it into a tragedy which makes the love even harder to take place. Shakespeare has always found a way to make love as complicated as he can which leads me to believe that he feels that you must work for love and it should not be handed to you. Love is already complicated, but when Shakespeare is involved he makes sure at least two things come around that can make it harder for those who are in love to actually stay in love.
Therefore, because William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18” and Edmund Spenser’s “Sonnet 75” share the idea that love is sincere and eternal, they can be looked upon as similar in theme. However, although similar in theme, Shakespeare’s intent is portraying the true everlasting beauty of his love, which is already achieved, whereas Spenser concentrates more on trying to entice his desired love, remaining optimistic throughout the entire poem.
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.
Reading the poem once or twice may cause a reader to suggest that these two poems have the same mood. While both poems have a reference to a woman, they also vary in some ways. In “Sonnet 18,” the tone is all about love and the affection that Shakespeare has for his women. For example, Shakespeare compares a summer day to his women and says that she is “more lovely” and “more temperate.” The main reason he writes this poem is to
Thou art more lovely and more temperate" (18.1-2). The first few lines of this sonnet place vivid images in the readers mind about a beautiful and sweet tempered person. Most readers believe this person to be a beautiful woman because of the preconceived notions about the dynamics of love.... ... middle of paper ...
He compares her voice to music as he, “loves to hear her speak, yet well [he] know / [t]hat music hath a far more pleasing sound” (Shakespeare 9-10), as no voice would be as pleasant as music, further ridiculing the conventional love poem. The tone of the speaker changes in the final quatrain, as he loves the way she speaks but, her sound is not as pleasant as music. The speaker’s appreciation of his mistress is made apparent, as his comparisons are not as harsh in the third quatrains when compared to the first two quatrains. The flaws he depicts almost begins to idealize his mistress. Work our way through the sonnet he begins to half-heartedly glamourizes her beauty and we come to know, to him her flaws are what makes her beautiful and his love for his mistress beings to reveal its self. From the way the speaker speaks in the final rhyming couplet we see the speaker acknowledging her true beauty as all her flaws are not enough to put him off, as he lists all her imperfections but does not complain, rather he seems to admire them as his “love as rare” (Shakespeare 13) as any “belied” (Shakespeare 13) false