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Shakespearean sonnet critical analysis
Shakespearean sonnet critical analysis
Gender roles of the Elizabethan era
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The conceit, characterization and tone of the one hundred and forty third sonnet make this particular sonnet interesting to analyze. The collection of sonnets was written by William Shakespeare around the mid-1590s and published by Thomas Thorpe in 1609. “Sonnet 143” describes a woman who "sets down her babe and makes all swift dispatch." Her attention has been restrained by the idea of taking possession of a feathered creature that has run away (line 3). In this sonnet, Shakespeare creates a rivalry of role-play between a man in pursuit of a woman, who is compared to a housewife and a mother, and the love interest the woman in pursuing. The speaker is in desperate pursuit of the housewife, like a child who wishes to be pacified and kissed …show more content…
It is possible that the words “not prizing” implicates that the housewife dislikes or cares nothing for the babe. The interaction of the babe with the housewife is noticed by the avoidance of the housewife. It is portrayed that the babe is conscious that the housewife does not care for him by usage of the words “not prizing.” It is possible he (the babe) wants to be seen in a desiring manner, yet is aware that this is not going to take place in their relationship, which causes him hidden sadness. The speaker states, “Whilst I, thy babe, chase thee afar behind,” indicates that the babe references himself as a prisoner, knowing he would dedicate himself to chase after her in the distance. The speaker is a whimpering, blemished, and naïve child that longs for the housewife that has no interest in him. Interestingly, the speaker is compared to the crying baby that is mocked to appear feeble and frantic. The weeping babe, “Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent,” after another, is a tragic scene, as his mother tries to seize her love …show more content…
Shakespeare brings into play negative language with the metaphor of the "housewife," and a triple meaning of "Will," to point out that feeling affection for another is agonizing, but also a method to restore the diminished reflection he saw of him. The word “Will” can be thought of as unclear, acting as the word that takes the place of the noun, the name of the lover, and the verb suggesting longing. Interestingly, the speaker is compared to an annoying baby that cries and is mocked to appear frail and frantic. The agonizing scene of the babe chasing after the housewife, who is chasing after her love interest that has no interest in her, shows that the babe and housewife both are pursuing something not within their reach of reality. It is as if they are both in a fantasy
William Shakespeare, an illustrious and eminent playwright from the Elizabethan Age (16th Century) and part owner of the Globe theatre wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which he portrays the theme of love in many different ways. These include the paternal love seen in the troubled times for Egeus and his rebellious daughter Hermia, true Love displayed with the valiant acts of Lysander and Hermia and the destructive love present in the agonizing acts of Titania towards her desperate lover Oberon. Through the highs and lows of love, the first love we clasp is the paternal love from our family.
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 can be considered one of the greatest writers in English language of all time. He was born in Stratford in 1564 and it is well-known that he has written 38 plays, 154 sonnets and two long narrative poems. A widely held assumption is that he wrote his sonnets during the 1590s. Thus, they belong to the Elizabethan era, where literature was in one of the most splendid moments of the English literature. Consequently, William Shakespeare stands out in this period, not only for being a playwright, but also as a poet. His sonnets gave him a reputation and are considered to be ‘Shakespeare 's most important and distinctive contributions to lyric poetry, as well as the most profoundly enigmatic works in the canon '. Shakespeare’s sonnets can be divided into three different groups, as regards the subject of the poem. One of them would be constituted by the first 126 sonnets, where the addressee is a young man. The next sonnets, 127–52, would be addressed to ‘the dark lady’, whereas the last two poems are fables about Cupid. This essay will particularly focus on Sonnet 20 and Sonnet 130, making a comparison of the two poems by establishing a relationship between form and meaning.
The sonnet opens with a seemingly joyous and innocent tribute to the young friend who is vital to the poet's emotional well being. However, the poet quickly establishes the negative aspect of his dependence on his beloved, and the complimentary metaphor that the friend is food for his soul decays into ugly imagery of the poet alternating between starving and gorging himself on that food. The poet is disgusted and frightened by his dependence on the young friend. He is consumed by guilt over his passion. Words with implicit sexual meanings permeate the sonnet -- "enjoyer", "treasure", "pursuing", "possessing", "had" -- as do allusions to five of the seven "deadly" sins -- avarice (4), gluttony (9, 14), pride (5), lust (12), and envy (6).
him not to prepare for the loss of his beauty and youth. The only way
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...
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.
has the gentle heart of a woman but is not inconsistent as is the way
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) lived in a time of religious turbulence. During the Renaissance people began to move away from the Church. Authors began to focus on the morals of the individual and on less lofty ideals than those of the Middle Ages. Shakespeare wrote one-hundred fifty-four sonnets during his lifetime. Within these sonnets he largely explored romantic love, not the love of God. In Sonnet 29 Shakespeare uses specific word choice and rhyme to show the reader that it is easy to be hopeful when life is going well, but love is always there, for rich and poor alike, even when religion fails.
1-2: 'I do not draw my conclusions from the stars, and yet I think I understand astrology; 3-4: 'but (astrology) has never forecasted (to me) good or bad luck, or of plagues, or of dearths, or of the quality of the forecoming seasons:' 5-6: 'Nor can I prognosticate (from the stars) every single minute, assigning to each minute [that is, whether or not it will] thunder or rain or wind,' 7-8: 'Or say that all will be well by signs (of the stars), which looking to the sky (for answers) is my habit:' 9-10: 'only from your eyes do I form my knowledge, and, in your eyes (which are constant stars), do I see such art' 11-12: 'As truth or beauty thriving together, if you would convert from yourself to store [as in store cattle]:' The paraphrase for the three quatrains may not seem necessary, as it is fairly straightfoward in its meaning; however, the couplet provides ambiguity. The couplet is where Shakespeare usually makes an antithesis of the three quatrains or presents some ambiguity, the latter of which is this one. I have found
Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare is widely read and studied. But what is Shakespeare trying to say? Though it seems there will not be a simple answer, for a better understanding of Shakespeare's Sonnet 73, this essay offers an explication of the sonnet from The Norton Anthology of English Literature:
This sonnet appears to be another version of 153 rather than one of a series. These two sonnets, two renderings of the same ides, could either prove or disprove Shakespeare's authorship. Only twice did Shakespeare rewrite any of his sonnets, both 138 and 144 appear slightly modified in _The Passionate Pilgrim_. These are evidence of Shakespeare's rewritings, but the only problem is if one is out to prove the authorship on these grounds, over-revision remains a factor; that is, Shakespeare rewrote the two sonnets changing only a few words and not the entire sonnet. These seem to be the problems with citing Shakespeaare as their author, but equally disproving him as the author. If I were to argue for Shakespeare's authorship, I would correlate "the help of bath" with being an allusion to "The Wife of Bath's Tale" in Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_. Shakespeare used Chaucer as a source in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ (from "The Kinght's Tale" and "The Miller's Tale"), _Troilus and Cressida_ (from _Troilus and Criseyde) and _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ (from "The Knight's Tale"). Seeing that Shakespeare used Chaucer as a reference in the past for help, I suppose "the help of bath" could be a tribut to Chaucer and thus a possible source or allusion. But this does remain on unsubstantial grounds due to the possibility of it simply meaning a water-filled basin.
In traditional love poems women are portrayed with having impractical features. Many times women are said to have roses in their cheeks, or that their breath smelled of perfume. The speaker declares, “no such roses see I in her cheeks. (6)” This image shows that Shakespeare is trying to convey the message that it is impossible for humans to have abstract qualities that romanticists would use. “Ironically, he still uses the stock imagery of love poetry—such as roses, perfume, and music to describe his love. As before, however, they are used in the most unexpected way and with a dramatic timing that fully draws out their element of surprise. (Woolway)” When Shakespeare describes his mistress’ breath, he uses the word “reeks”. Reeks, a word that might impress a horrid sense of smell on the present day reader was, in Shakespeare’s time, a word that just meant to emit a smell. I conclude by noticing the elusive effect of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. I find it difficult to read more than three at a single sitting, and as an entire collection they seem always about two steps beyond reach. They have a habit of breaking free from any interpretative system that tries to contextualize or control them and, however well one might think one is familiar with them, it is very much the case that I can always open my copy of Shakespeare’s Sonnets at random and quickly encounter one of them as though for the very first time. As a friend of mine once said, “if you think you have exhausted a sonnet by Shakespeare, it is you yourself who is exhausted.” Tidy and concentrated as the Sonnets seem, they are always ready and willing to break
A good example of the octave/sestet division is seen in this sonnet. This poem, although slightly past the rival poet sequence, can be read, I feel, as addressed to the rival poet. In the octave, words such as "merit" and "virtuous", coupled with line 6 suggest an addressee of the same profession. But it very well may be said it is simply of friendship, reading line 4 as 'and prove that you are right, although you are renouncing our friendship'. In the second quatrain, Shakespeare supposes he can write a story on the friend's impairment of their relationship. 10-12: 'If by concentrating all my loving thoughts towards you, the injuries, as a result of my thought, that I will inflict upon myself, do prove to be advantageous to you, but twice that to me'. It is difficult to say whether "double" is hyperbolical or if it has some abstruse mathematical conceit (as seen in sonnet 6, lines 5-10). It does reflect upon "gainer" in line 9, which supports the reading of any gain to the friend as a gain to the poet (Shakespeare). 13-14: 'This is the way my love is, and I belong to you in the same respect that I will bear all wrongdoing in order to place you in the
Shakespeare begins this sonnet by telling him he should realize, because of his aging, that it is time to produce a child, for is he does not, he cheats the world, mother earth, who then becomes an unblessed mother. The "mother" also refers to the mother of the would be child--she then being unblessed from the lack of a child. 5-6: 'What part of her, physicall or emotionally, keeps you from friuting her womb through procreation [an act that comes with marriage]?' 7-8: '(If not that reason), are you so narcissistic that you will bring the end of your family to the tomb?'