In the myriad mind Shakespeare, an innumerable amount of poems were written by this prolific writer. However, a forbidden collection of over 150 sonnets was never written for the public, as Shakespeare himself didn’t publish the works and never intended any of them to go beyond the few persons discussed within. Because of this, reading the many sonnets he created can give a reader a new perspective on the complicated inner workings of the mind of one of the most well-known writers ever. One poem of particularly interest is sonnet 143. The sonnet discusses a mother abandoning her child in pursuit of an escaped chicken, but below the surface far more is going on in this poem than previously thought, and it shows the complicated feelings Shakespeare …show more content…
Throughout the first 8 lines of the sonnet Shakespeare tells how the careful housewife sets the neglected child down in pursuit of the escaped feathered creature while the child cries for her to return. This metaphor has the effect of showing the relationship between the three characters in real life as Shakespeare sees it. Shakespeare attempts in these lines to make the dark lady see him as a much more important factor in her life than he handsome youth by comparing himself to her child and the youth to a chicken. While the freudian implications of Shakespeare seeing his mistress in a motherly role are telling on their own, it’s also important to see the juxtaposition between how Shakespeare views the handsome youth depending on the situation. When trying to woo the handsome youth like in sonnet 18 Shakespeare says he is more beautiful and perfect than a summer’s day. However, the purpose of this poem is to get …show more content…
In showing the extent of the mistresses negligence towards himself, Shakespeare describes a scene in which “So runn 'st thou after that which flies from thee,/ whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind.” The imagery of the flying feathered creature gives the sense that the handsome youth is no more than a distraction to the mistress, which has caused her to ignore Shakespeare. While the mistress is distracted by the youth, Shakespeare tries for naught to reach the dark lady to regain their love. The hopelessness of his attempts are seen by the imagery of a baby attempting to reach his mother from afar. In line 6 with “Cries to catch her,” and line 8 with “Not prizing her poor infant 's discontent,” the auditory imagery of cries shows his despair in his failure to reach the dark lady. The embodiment of shakespeare as crying baby chasing after a mother to embody not only expresses his sorrows, but also shows a final attempt at garnering the interest of the mistress with pity. In lines 14 Shakespeare explains that “If thou turn back, and my loud crying still,” basically pleading her to cease his melancholy by returning. Aside from his pleading to her, his description of a “loud crying” describes a persistent and annoying plead for her to return, which shall only end when she returns to him. This not only makes Shakespeare
"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.
To understand these two sonnets completely, one must first have a little background information concerning the sequence of the Sonnets and William Shakespeare's life. Shakespeare's series of Sonnets can be divided, "into two sections, the first (numbers 1-126) being written to or about a young man, and most of those in the second (numbers 127-154) being written to or about a dark woman" (Wilson 17-8). Because of the autobiographical nature of Shakespeare's Sonnets, these two characters are people from Shakespeare's actual life. The young man is Shakespeare's patron and Shakespeare has a "humble and selfless adoration [that] he feels for his young friend" (Wilson 32). The dark woman is Shakespeare's lover, a woman that infatuates him. These two people provide an emotional contrast for each other and Shakespeare's views on love. When these two meet, they have an affair, "behavior that, as the Poet [Shakespeare] is really deeply in love with the woman, causes him such distress, at times agony, as to introduce a note of tragedy into the series [of sonnets], . . ." (Wilson 33). The affair between the young man and the dark woman is the catalyst for Shakespeare's au...
William Shakespeare's sonnets deal with two very distinct individuals: the blond young man and the mysterious dark-haired woman. The young man is the focus of the earlier numbered sonnets while the latter ones deal primarily with the dark-haired woman. The character of the young man and a seductive mistress are brought together under passionate circumstances in Shakespeare's "Sonnet 42." The sexual prowess of the mistress entangles both Shakespeare and the young man in her web of flesh. This triangular sonnet brings out Shakespeare's affection for both individuals. His narcissistic ideal of delusional love for the young man is shown through diction and imagery, metrical variation and voice, contained in three quatrains and one couplet.
The body-soul dichotomy was a fairly common theme that was debated literarily from the middle ages to the Elizabethan period. Unbeknownst to many people William Shakespeare on multiple occasions referenced it. Of the literary works he composed, sonnet 146 is one of the most pronounced in its own right while being debated on multiple levels. It has such been correlated with others of his prior written sonnets and plays, sung as a hymn, recited at funerals, and compared against many pages and passages of the bible spanning from Genesis to Revelations but most likely viewed in terms of the Anglican Church. The Shakespeare Quarterly is a well-known journal that centers on all things Shakespearian. In 1976, Michael West, a writer and professor at the University of Pittsburg, went into great detail on this topic discussing Francis Davison’s Poetical Rhapsody “Tarquins in Lucrece” and Barbabe Googe’s translation of Paligenius’s “Zodiacus Vitae” all as a backdrop to solidify this argument that Shakespeare was a Christian writing on this subject (West, 111-116). During this essay, West went in belief was that sonnet 146, to be read correctly, must be viewed more from a Christian standpoint. His basis for this is that Shakespeare held that there is an ongoing conflict for which the body is attempting to subject the soul. Upon death though, the soul is victorious because, even though it goes without saying, the worms eat the body and loose the soul to be free (116).
Shakespeare’s themes are mostly conventional topics, such as love and beauty. Nevertheless, Shakespeare presents these themes in his own unique fashion, most notably by addressing the poems of beauty not to a fair maiden, but instead to a young man: ‘‘shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate” (book). Shakespeare points out that the youth’s beauty is more perfect then the beauty of a summer day. It is also “more temperate”, in other words more gentle, more restrained whereas the summer’s day might have violent excesses in store. At first glance of sonnet 18, it’s pretty much certain that one would think Shakespeare is referring to a woman, not a man. The idea of a man describing another man with such choice of words is always seen with a different eye. Several even stated that Shakespeare is homosexual. Whichever the case may be, Shakespeare painted beauty in the most original matter. He dared to do what everybody else didn’t, or maybe feared to, and accomplished his goal with flying colors. Besides, in his sonnets, Shakespeare states that the young man was made for a woman and urges the man to marry so he can pass on h...
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.
The speaker uses metaphors to describe his mistress’ eyes to being like the sun; her lips being red as coral; cheeks like roses; breast white as snow; and her voices sounding like music. In the first few lines of the sonnet, the speaker view and tells of his mistress as being ugly, as if he was not attracted to her. He give...
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:
The love that a person has for someone is not the same for other people. They can look at their love through nature or just by their beauty. Shakespeare has the ability to explain his love for someone by using nature as a reference. Looking at two of Shakespeare’s sonnets 18 and 130 explore the differences and similarities between one another. In Sonnet 18 and 130, both show Shakespeare’s knowledge in developing his love and respect.
Compared to the first few lines in the second sonnet: "My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun coral is far more red than her lips red" And this shocking feeling of offense and harshness continues through to line twelve in the second sonnet. However, there are some dark points in the first sonnet as well, as death is mentioned in line eleven "Nor shall death brag thou wandr'st in his shade" And "rough winds" in line three. However, how harsh and sincere these sonnets may be, both have the conclusions with the similar idea that Shakespeare loves his woman so much that he doesn't need to give her false comparisons to do with beautiful items or beautiful things that don't last forever - his love lasts for eternity in the sonnet: "So long as men can breath, and eyes can see So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."
Sonnet 71 is one of 154 sonnets written by William Shakespeare, and although it may rank fairly low on the popularity scale, it clearly demonstrates a pessimistic and morbid tone. With the use of metaphors, personification, and imagery this sonnet focuses on the poet’s feelings about his death and how the young should mourn him after he has died. Throughout the sonnet, there appears to be a continual movement of mourning, and with a profound beauty that can only come from Shakespeare. Shakespeare appeals to our emotional sense of “feeling” with imagery words like vile, dead, be forgot, and decay, and we gain a better understanding of the message and feelings dictated by the speaker.
This poem speaks of a love that is truer than denoting a woman's physical perfection or her "angelic voice." As those traits are all ones that will fade with time, Shakespeare exclaims his true love by revealing her personality traits that caused his love. Shakespeare suggests that the eyes of the woman he loves are not twinkling like the sun: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun" (1). Her hair is compared to a wire: "If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head" (3). These negative comparisons may sound almost unloving, however, Shakespeare proves that the mistress outdistances any goddess. This shows that the poet appreciates her human beauties unlike a Petrarchan sonnet that stresses a woman's cheek as red a rose or her face white as snow. Straying away from the dazzling rhetoric, this Shakespearean poem projects a humane and friendly impression and elicits laughter while expressing a truer love. A Petrarchan sonnet states that love must never change; this poem offers a more genuine expression of love by describing a natural woman.
The fourteen line sonnet is constructed by three quatrains and one couplet. With the organization of the poem, Shakespeare accomplishes to work out a different idea in each of the three quatrains as he writes the sonnet to lend itself naturally. Each of the quatrain contains a pair of images that create one universal idea in the quatrain. The poem is written in a iambic pentameter with a rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Giving the poem a smooth rhyming transition from stanza to
The situation of Shakespeare deliberately using typical love poetry metaphors against themselves is important for readers to question in order to continue on trying to understand the underlying idea of the sonnet. To continue on with the notion of Shakespeare commenting on the Dark Lady’s appearance with the reversed use of the Petrarch clichés, in lines 5-12, “I have seen roses damask'd, red and white/ But no such roses see I in her cheeks/ And in some perfumes is there more delight/ Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks/ I love to hear her speak, yet well I know/ That music hath a far more pleasing sound/ I grant I never saw a goddess go/ My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.” To paraphrase this, Shakespeare is saying he has seen red and white damask roses but her cheeks just pale, no hint of pink (line 5-6). Perfume tends to smell good and is better than her breath because it reeks (line 7-8). He likes to hear her talk but music is nicer to listen to than her voice (line 9-10). He has never seen a goddess on Earth, and he knows his mistress walks steadily on the ground (line 11-12). All 12 beginning lines can impose
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.