Blake's Presentation of Children in William Shakespeare's Play

Blake's Presentation of Children in William Shakespeare's Play

§ LANGUAGE AND STYLE

§ SOCIAL/HISTORICAL BACKGROUNG

§ THE POET’S DISTINCTIVE USE OF FORM AND STRUCTURE

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William Blake was a poet. He had a very interesting life. Although

some thought he was crazy or insane, others enjoyed his work so he

kept on writing. William Blake was a very good poet despite what some

might say. Blake wrote in the 18th century. He wrote his poems and

placed into books, two of which we looked at were “Songs of

Experience” and “Songs of Innocence”. Blake wrote a number of short

poems in various notebooks, some of which are rather more accessible

than the Prophetic Books and even than the poems of Innocence and

Experience (These are the paired books that make up Blake's best-known

work: the sets of poems about innocence and experience together

illustrate 'the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul').

At this time a lot of children had to work as a result of the

industrial revolution. One of the main child employments was to

employ children aged between six and ten to be chimneysweepers. The

chimneysweepers had a very hard life. Many of them became deformed

because of the way they were pushed into small spaces. They were also

prone to cancer and other deadly diseases. These children were mostly

orphans or were sold as slaves. Although some of them were sent by

their own parents to make money.

The first poem that I will look at is London. This poem gives the

reader an insight into what London was like in the time of the

Industrial revolution here in Britain. Blake has given us this insight

by depicting what it was like to live in London. The poem is as if we

are traveling through London, seeing and hearing all of the actions in

the poem.

This poem is very dark. It shows us how the children of London were

treated. It gives a very negative view about their childhood.