An Analysis Of Shakespeare's Sonnets

After reading “The Reformation” and two of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, I have come to realize that someone else’s reality may not be another’s. Throughout these literary works, the authors are describing their perspectives on certain subjects. The minds of the audiences for these literary pieces are opened to a whole new way of seeing a certain topic. In “The Reformation”, readers see why Protestants thought it was right to leave the Roman Catholic Church; and in the Sonnets, the audience get an image of Shakespeare’s perspective of what love should be like. One example of differentiating perspectives, is “The Reformation” period in England. In the early sixteenth century England had “a single religion, Catholicism” (324). All was well until the

“Sonnet Eighteen” was one of the first of the Sonnets to become very well known. It “sets a fearful problem in turning it into prose”, because it is so straight forward and easy to comprehend (Rowse 39). Throughout this poem, the reader will acknowledge that Shakespeare “finds the human beauty “more lovely” and more lasting than nature’s” (Kastan 10). In the Sonnet, Shakespeare is comparing a woman to a summer’s day. He uses imagery to differentiate the harshness of summer and beauty of the woman. The audience can see the speaker’s perspective of youth and beauty throughout the lines in the

In lines two and three, Shakespeare writes to the woman “thou art more lovely and more temperate: / rough winds do shake the darling buds of May” (2-3). You can see in those two lines that the poet views nature as harsh and unenjoyable, but contrasts his viewing of the woman as lovely and with more mild characteristics. After describing the qualities of nature and the woman, the speaker goes on to talk about the time given for these assets to last. The speaker believes that the “lease” which translates to “allotted time”, allowed for summer is not enough to compare to the eternal beauty of a woman (4)(Kastan 10). On line nine he talks about the time frame of the woman’s beauty, he writes “but thy eternal summer shall not fade” meaning that her beauty cannot be phased by time, unlike nature (9). In those few lines, the audience can see that although a summer’s day can be rough only for a little while, the beauty of the woman is unfading. At the end of the poem, the audience can understand that the woman’s beauty is sealed in the poem “so long lives this, and this gives life to thee” (14).
The next new perspective on love comes from Shakespeare’s “Sonnet One Hundred and Sixteen”. “Sonnet One Hundred and Sixteen” “sets forth an ideal of true love as something permanent and never changing” (Kastan 17). Integrated throughout the poem are various circumstances in which true