A Love Song In William Shakespeare's Hamlet

1. What expectations are created by the title of the poem? Are those expectations fulfilled by the text?

The title of this poem makes us think that this is going to be a love story with him and a significant other. But these expectations are not fulfilled by the text starting in the introductory epigraph. The title is completely ironic because this is not a “love song”, yet this story is about a depressed, lonely and weak man. The title makes us think that this poem is going to be a serious love song about J. Alfred Prufrock, but instead it is more of a fake love song. From the third line of the poem he shows a man who is unable to communicate, much less sing, “love songs” to anyone.

2. John Berryman wrote of line 3, “With this line, modern poetry begins.” What do you think he meant?

The third line of the poem displays that

The references to the image of “oyster-shells” tell the reader of his suppressed self. Prufrock compares himself to a few of the Shakespearean characters two of them being Hamlet and an attendant lord. The reference that Prufrock makes to Hamlet is a reference that he describes by denial. He says, “No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be” (line 111). Prufrock says that he is not Hamlet because he does not have the self-confidence that is needed in order to be the main character of a play. Prufrock references himself to that of the attendant lord from Shakespeare. The attendant lord is a character in the play that is of no importance, and is only there to provide enough time for the main characters of the play to get changed and ready in between scenes. In lines 114-116 Prufrock describes the attendant lord as “an easy tool, deferential, political, caution, meticulous.” Of these images that are represented in describing the attendant lord and Prufrock himself they all define a sense of negative self-