The Influence Of Sheakespeare's Views On Love

944 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Representation of women in Shakespeare

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

Show More
Related

  • Examples Of Juxtaposition In Sonnet Xvii

    672 Words  | 2 Pages

    Shakespeare is known for his extravagant tales of love and tragedy. Whether it’s in his plays “Romeo and Juliet” or “Hamlet”. He can take simple concept such as flowers blooming or a butterfly flapping its wings, and turn it into the most romantic thing that you’ve ever heard. In his poem “Sonnet XVII”, he creates a romantic confession of love by using romantic language, euphonious diction, and juxtaposition to swoon his readers.

    Read More

  • Limitations Of Desire In The 16th Century Literature

    1145 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Close Reading of Shakespeare´s Sonnet 130

    671 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 and Dolly Parton’s Love is Like a Butterfly

    1032 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Sonnet 18”, decidedly the most celebrated of Shakespeare’s 154, was written in the early 17th century. It consists of 14 lines in iambic pentameter, each comprising of ten syllables, and utilizes the rhyming scheme abab, cdcd, efef, gg. It is typical of the sonnets written during that time period, both in its format and content. “Sonnet 18” deals with love’s relation to beauty, as well as immortalization of love and beauty through poetry. In the first two lines, Shakespeare compares the beauty of a young person, to a summer’s day. He states that the subject of the poem is in fact lovelier and “more temperate” (Shakespeare 2). In lines 3-6, he illustrates the subject’s perfection by saying that he is not affected by the flaws of summer, such as its brevity and uneven temperatures. In the following few lines, Shakespeare remarks that although everything beautiful will at some point fade away, the beauty of the subject will last forever. The beauty, and Shakespeare’s love of it, will exist forever in the lines of the sonnet. Shakespeare effectively communicates the message of the sonnet through elaborate use of literary devices, mainly metaphors. He does not use any similes; therefore the comparisons he makes are not always apparent. One of the more evident comparisons can be seen in the very first lines of the poem. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?/Thou art more lovely and more temperate” (Shakespeare 1-2). Here, Shakespeare makes his contrast of the summer and the subject obvious to the reader. In line 5, he uses a metaphor to describe the weather during summer: “Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines” (Shakespeare 5). In this metaphor the “eye of heaven” is the sun. He uses personification in the following line: “And o...

    Read More

  • How Does Wroth Present Petrarch's Perspective On Love?

    576 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sonnet 20 discusses Shakespeare’s feminine

    Read More

  • Essay on Lust and Love in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 and Campion’s There is a Garden

    855 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...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.

    Read More

  • Shakespeare's My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun

    707 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Analysis of the Sonnet, "My Mistress' Eyes are Nothing like the Sun"

    431 Words  | 1 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Shakespeare's Sonnet 75 And Sonnet 116

    1314 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 As A Parody Of Courtly Love

    1351 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • William Shakespeare and Edmund Spenser

    759 Words  | 2 Pages

    From the works of William Shakespeare and Edmund Spenser it is clear that some similarities are apparent, however the two poets encompass different writing styles, as well as different topics that relate to each other in their own unique ways. In Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18” and Spenser’s “Sonnet 75”, both poets speak of love in terms of feelings and actions by using different expressive views, allowing the similar topics to contain clear distinctions. Although Edmund Spenser’s “Sonnet 75” and William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18” relate in the sense that love is genuine and everlasting, Spenser suggests love more optimistically, whereas Shakespeare focuses on expressing the beauty and stability of love.

    Read More

  • Love in Shakespeare's Sonnets 18 and 130

    710 Words  | 2 Pages

    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 ...

    Read More

  • The Idea Of Love In Shakespeare's Sonnet 130

    1014 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Shakespeare's Love To The Dark Lady Analysis

    979 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Critical Appreciation Of Sonnet 130

    962 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

More about The Influence Of Sheakespeare's Views On Love

Open Document