Sir Phillip Sidney's Sonnet #47 from Astrophil and Stella
Sir Phillip Sidney's Sonnet # 47 from Astrophil and Stella The sonnet is a short concise form of writing and it takes a great mind to master it. By mastering it, I mean to be able to say so much in what seems like so little space. Sir Phillip Sidney comes as close to mastering it as anyone else in his time or any other does. As the opening line says, this is about a betrayal. Strangely enough, the last line of the sonnet ends with a word that is the very essence of betrayal. The sonnet ends with the word, lie. This would cause one to expect to get an explanation of the betrayal between the first and last lines. This appears to be a story of both love and betrayal. In the sonnet, it is love that betrays. The narrator opens the sonnet with a question to himself. He wants to know if he has betrayed his own liberty or his freedom. The next three lines of this quatrain use imagery of slavery. The narrator is struggling in knowing if he were born free or if he were born a slave to this love. He raises a question in the closing line of the quatrain, if anyone can handle the confines of love and the boundaries it seems to place on a person. The first quatrain uses such dark imagery that for Americans today brings up thoughts of the Civil War. The fact is, slavery as Americans today think of it was not around in Sidney's time. He wrote Astrophil and Stella around three hundred years before the Civil War. Also, the way Sidney lays out the first quatrain is peculiar. A single line that is not indented is placed, followed by a couplet that Sidney indents, which is then followed by the last line that is not indented. The same format is used in the next quatrain as well. In th...
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...someone else in order to know what love is not. The narrator of this sonnet is saying that he knows what love is not but by saying that, he is saying that he knows what it is. Once a person goes through a close relationship where they discover love for the very first time, they are more prepared to find love in life because they know what feeling it is that they are looking for. The sad thing is it usually takes the breaking of a heart in order for one to know the meaning or feeling of true love but through this they become better prepared for the road ahead of them. This sonnet holds true to the fact that a lot can be said in so little space. What exactly is said is always determined by the reader and what he or she gets out of it. Fourteen short lines can that can raise so many questions, feelings and emotions can surely be considered a great piece of literature.
Sonnets are concerned with the idea of love, which makes it an appropriate device to use. This passage can be contrasted to love. that Romeo once felt for Rosaline, however Romeo in the first instance. was unwilling and unable to act upon his shallow feelings towards the object of his affection, while at his very first meeting with Juliet. he was able to make contact with her rather than view from afar.
It speaks about not allowing anything to break the marital bond not even old age or sickness. The united couple must stand together and not allow their hearts to wander. In the beginning of the poem, the first question asked of the bride and groom is if there are any admitted impediment that would hinder or corrupt this union. Shakespeare even allows the reader to understand that he truly believes the words that he writes by stating, “If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved” (Sonnet 481). Shakespeare interjects his personal beliefs by telling the reader that if this poem is not true, then he was never was a writer, and that no man has ever
"Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal [but] which the reader recognizes as his own." (Salvatore Quasimodo). There is something about the human spirit that causes us to rejoice in shared experience. We can connect on a deep level with our fellow man when we believe that somehow someone else understands us as they relate their own joys and hardships; and perhaps nowhere better is this relationship expressed than in that of the poet and his reader. For the current assignment I had the privilege (and challenge) of writing an imitation of William Shakespeare’s "Sonnet 87". This poem touched a place in my heart because I have actually given this sonnet to someone before as it then communicated my thoughts and feelings far better than I could. For this reason, Sonnet 87 was an easy choice for this project, although not quite so easy an undertaking as I endeavored to match Shakespeare’s structure and bring out his themes through similar word choice.
Shakespeare’s Sonnet #23 is addressed to the lovely young man, called WH. The speaker is trying to convey his complex feeling towards his lover. He is tongue-tied in the young man’s company and he is trying to explain this awkwardness and express his complex emotions in this sonnet. It is, the speaker says, due to the hugeness of his love, that makes it too heavy to carry. For the author this sonnet is a silent representation of his inner voice. To show the complexity of the situation, he compares poet’s role as a lover to an actor’s timidity onstage. He asks WH to read these silent lines and explains that love will give him the insight to read between lines. The sonnet consists of 14 lines, which are splitted into octave and a sestet, and has typical for Shakespeare’s sonnets rhyme scheme: a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g. He uses first two quatrains to establish a problem and then resolves it in a third quatrain, summarizing solution in the following couplet.
Browning’s “Sonnet 43” vividly depicts the human dependency of love. She uses irony to emphasize that love overpowers everything. Browning starts the poem with “How do I love thee” (Browning). Ironically, she answers the very question she presents the reader by describing her love and the extent to which she loves (Kelly 244). The ironic question proposes a challenge to the reader. Browning insinuates how love overpowers so that one may overcome the challenge. People must find the path of love in life to become successful and complete. Also, the diction in “Sonnet 43” supports the idea that love is an all-encompassing force. The line, “if God choose, I shall love thee better after death” means that love is so powerful that even after someone passes away lov...
...e speaker admits she is worried and confused when she says, “The sonnet is the story of a woman’s struggle to make choices regarding love.” (14) Her mind is disturbed from the trials of love.
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.
Shakespeare’s sonnets include love, the danger of lust and love, difference between real beauty and clichéd beauty, the significance of time, life and death and other natural symbols such as, star, weather and so on. Among the sonnets, I found two sonnets are more interesting that show Shakespeare’s love for his addressee. The first sonnet is about the handsome young man, where William Shakespeare elucidated about his boundless love for him and that is sonnet 116. The poem explains about the lovers who have come to each other freely and entered into a relationship based on trust and understanding. The first four lines reveal the poet’s love towards his lover that is constant and strong and will not change if there any alternation comes. Next four lines explain about his love which is not breakable or shaken by the storm and that love can guide others as an example of true love but that extent of love cannot be measured or calculated. The remaining lines of the third quatrain refer the natural love which can’t be affected by anything throughout the time (it can also mean to death). In the last couplet, if
Based on a line of 14 words, by simply taking all possible combinations of the words, there are over 87 billion combinations. Certainly, most of these combinations would not make any sense at all, but surely there are more than 14 that would make some sort of sense. This means the author did not just take 14 lines that make little sense and compose a random poem. Instead, each line builds upon the previous line and leads into the next one. Similar to most English sonnets, this poem explains a problem or dilemma in the first 12 lines. The last two lines (or final couplet) solve the problem and shed light on the rest of the poem. The paradox in this sonnet is that, even though saying (or creating) poetry is nothing in and of itself, through producing poetry as a reader or, even more importantly, as an author, we can gain meaning from the poetry, and only then can we make it a part of us.
In Sonnet number one-hundred sixteen Shakespeare deals with the characteristics of a love that is “not time’s fool”, that true love that will last through all (Ln: 9). This sonnet uses the traditional Shakespearian structure of three quatrains and a couplet, along with a standard rhyme scheme. The first and third quatrains deal with the idea that love is “an ever-fixed mark”, something that does not end or change over time (Ln: 5). Shakespeare illustrates this characteristic of constancy through images of love resisting movemen...
In truly Renaissance English artistic fashion, poets such as Phillip Sidney and William Shakespeare negotiate poetic boundaries, while implementing Italian conventions. They manipulate the sonnet form and climb Castiglione’s “ladder of love” throughout their poems. Sidney’s Astrophil (Astrophil and Stella) behaves wildly, as Castiglione’s Bembo (The Courtier) expects from a young courtier; he is incapable of being able to see beyond physical form. Shakespeare’s speaker in “Sonnet 130” sees beyond form, almost to a fault. He berates his lover by straying from typical poetic intimacy, but he does so because he sees beyond her physical beauty. Sidney implements predominantly traditional Petrarchan sonnets, but creates a caricature of a “sensual lover;” while Shakespeare experiments with style, and he creates an exceptionally “reasonable lover.” Some scholars sharply contrast the two authors, asserting that Shakespeare’s Sonnets negatively respond to sonnets like Astrophil and Stella. However, the two both develop distinctive stylistic alterations to Italian conventions and Shakespeare borrows from Sidney within his poetic innovation.
In Elizabeth Browning’s poem ‘Sonnet 43’, Browning explores the concept of love through her sonnet in a first person narrative, revealing the intense love she feels for her beloved, a love which she does not posses in a materialistic manner, rather she takes it as a eternal feeling, which she values dearly, through listing the different ways she loves her beloved.
In “Sonnet XVII,” the text begins by expressing the ways in which the narrator does not love, superficially. The narrator is captivated by his object of affection, and her inner beauty is of the upmost significance. The poem shows the narrator’s utter helplessness and vulnerability because it is characterized by raw emotions rather than logic. It then sculpts the image that the love created is so personal that the narrator is alone in his enchantment. Therefore, he is ultimately isolated because no one can fathom the love he is encountering. The narrator unveils his private thoughts, leaving him exposed and susceptible to ridicule and speculation. However, as the sonnet advances toward an end, it displays the true heartfelt description of love and finally shows how two people unite as one in an overwhelming intimacy.
Browning’s “Sonnet 14” exemplifies the theme of the dependency of love, through point of view. Browning uses first-person singular point of view to create an emotional connection between the speaker and the reader. However, “Sonnet 14” opens with “thou” which helps the reader connect to the speaker of the poem by directly addressing the reader (Biespiel 3521). The requirement that love must come from within made by the speaker, who is assumed to be a woman, are directed strictly towards the reader, an implied male. Browning harvests pity by addressing the reader directly as “thou.” The reader acknowledges that the speaker may not be receiving the love she needs to live. A critic affirms the necessity of love by his statement: “[Browning] wants the love to be lifted out of the realm of human passion into the realm of eternal heavenly passion” (Biespiel 3522). People live hoping to reach going to heaven by doing good deeds and living prosperously. Browning would like people to realize that by...
In Shakespeare’s sonnet 130, the speaker ponders the beauty, or the lack thereof, of his lover. Throughout the sonnet, the speaker presents his lover as an unattractive mistress with displeasing features, but in fact, the speaker is ridiculing, through the use of vivid imagery, the conventions of love poems and the way woman are portrayed through the use of false comparisons. In the end, the speaker argues that his mistress may not be perfect, but in his eyes, her beauty is equal to any woman who is abundantly admired and put through the untrue comparison.