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Shakespeares view of love
Analysis of Shakespeare
What did shakespeare convey through sonnets
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William Shakespeare- Mysterious Romantic
On an unknown April night, in 1564, at an unpretentious home in Henley St. in the serene town of Stratford, England Isle of Wight, Mary Arden and John Shakespeare gave light to a poet, who would later be referred to as a Literary Genius. Who is William Shakespeare? The known facts of Shakespeare's life are few, but nearly four hundred years after his death, William Shakespeare's art continues to inspire his readers. Much of Shakespeare’s praise is due to the wonderful words of his short sonnet poems, and how Shakespeare is able to apply virtually indescribable feelings into divine words. A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem, which Shakespeare traditionally wrote in iambic pentameter. Throughout his life Shakespeare wrote a total of 154 sonnets. All of his sonnets project some stage or aspect of love. Still, Shakespeare’s love life is a very contradicting topic that has been the subject of recurring debate. Even if the world lacks information regarding Shakespeare, his sonnets are evidence of his sexuality. What readers fail to realize while they assimilate his sonnets to their real life relationships is that Shakespeare was continuously defying the conventions of courtly love in his writings. This is why it can be deduced that the main theme of Shakespeare’s sonnets is love and how it reflects his sexuality.
The originality of Shakespeare's sonnets is clearly displayed through his first seventeen sonnets, or the Procreation Sonnets. They are written to a young man, known as the 'Fair Lord' or 'Fair Youth'. Throughout these sonnets Shakespeare is urging and persuades his breathtaking friend to get married and start a family, thereby passing down his beauty to the next generation. It is...
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...k Lady, but there are fact that are perfectly clear such as the fact that William Shakespeare was a romantic poet. Love is recognizably portrayed throughout his 154 sonnets, which are all clearly based on the different types of love that he explored all throughout his life. Shakespeare expressed his love to marriage and family, to a young boy, and finally to a dark lady. Therefore, it clear that the main theme in William Shakespeare’s sonnets is love.
Works Cited
Andrews, Hannah. "William Shakespeare." The Academy of American Poets. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Feb 2011. .
Greenblatt, Stephen. "William Shakespeare." The Norton
Anthology of English Literature. M.H. Abrams. Print.
Mowat , Barbara A. "Shakespeare's Sonnets ." Folger Shakespeare Library n. pag. Web. 14 Jan 2011.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was a Renaissance poet and playwright who wrote and published the original versions of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language, and often called England’s national poet. Several of his works became extremely well known, thoroughly studied, and enjoyed all over the world. One of Shakespeare’s most prominent plays is titled The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. In this tragedy, the concept that is discussed and portrayed through the characters is love, as they are recognized as being “in love”.
In Shakespeare’s first sonnet he declares his admiration and adoration towards this mans beauty, begging him to take pity on the world and reproduce to share with the rest of the world and generations to come his beauty that can be passed on through a child. He also compares in his 18th sonnet the beauty of another man with a summers day, stating that he is in fact more beautiful than a summer day because summer’s beauty ends and this mans beauty never will. It will forever be etched on paper in a poem Shakespeare has written. This shows his admiration and love toward these men, without any romantic or sexual interest. We can tell he has no sexual interest because he explains in sonnet 18 that mother nature got overly excited creating this perfect of a being, and added an extra part that was of no use to shakespeare. There is also no indication that these men have any personal connection to shakespeare, pushing away the idea of a love involving personality. This type of love can be eternal or temporary, all depending on the people who are a part of it. A type of love that is undeniably most common is the kindred
Love is portrayed in numerous mediums: song, history, rhythmic dance, or poetry. These four instruments of love typically identify the notion as subjective, lifeless, and static. Song writer of this age often convey love as a goal in life not as an element of living. While people from different periods in history used love to gain power giving love a bare and emotionless personnel. And lastly dance and poetry perceives love as inaudible and plain, because the vary performers and authors have not experienced love on an intimate or divine level. However William Shakespeare is one of few to frequently incorporate simple, yet complex terminology in sonnets to convey different concepts of love. The comprehensive
Wilson, John Dover. An Introduction to the Sonnets of Shakespeare: For the Use of Historians
Shakespeare, William, "Sonnet 42." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Eds. M.H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt. 7th ed. 2 vols. New York: Norton, 2000. 1:1033.
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
William Shakespeare’s sonnets are renowned as some of the greatest poetry ever written. He wrote a total of 154 sonnets that were published in 1609. Shakespearean sonnets consider similar themes including love, beauty, and the passing of time. In particular, William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 75 and Sonnet 116 portray the theme of love through aspects of their form and their display of metaphors and similes. While both of these sonnets depict the theme of love, they have significantly contrasting ideas about the same theme.
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.
Bender, Robert M., and Charles L. Squier, eds. The Sonnet: An Anthology. New York: Washington Square P, 1987.
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.
From the works of William Shakespeare and Edmund Spenser it is clear that some similarities are apparent, however the two poets encompass different writing styles, as well as different topics that relate to each other in their own unique ways. In Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18” and Spenser’s “Sonnet 75”, both poets speak of love in terms of feelings and actions by using different expressive views, allowing the similar topics to contain clear distinctions. Although Edmund Spenser’s “Sonnet 75” and William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18” relate in the sense that love is genuine and everlasting, Spenser suggests love more optimistically, whereas Shakespeare focuses on expressing the beauty and stability of love.
Much has been made (by those who have chosen to notice) of the fact that in Shakespeare's sonnets, the beloved is a young man. It is remarkable, from a historical point of view, and raises intriguing, though unanswerable, questions about the nature of Shakespeare's relationship to the young man who inspired these sonnets. Given 16th-Century England's censorious attitudes towards homosexuality, it might seem surprising that Will's beloved is male. However, in terms of the conventions of the poetry of idealized, courtly love, it makes surprisingly little difference whether Will's beloved is male or female; to put the matter more strongly, in some ways it makes more sense for the beloved to be male.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) lived in a time of religious turbulence. During the Renaissance people began to move away from the Church. Authors began to focus on the morals of the individual and on less lofty ideals than those of the Middle Ages. Shakespeare wrote one-hundred fifty-four sonnets during his lifetime. Within these sonnets he largely explored romantic love, not the love of God. In Sonnet 29 Shakespeare uses specific word choice and rhyme to show the reader that it is easy to be hopeful when life is going well, but love is always there, for rich and poor alike, even when religion fails.
Almost four hundred years after his death, William Shakespeare's work continues to live on through his readers. He provides them with vivid images of what love was like during the 1600's. Shakespeare put virtually indescribable feelings into beautiful words that fit the specific form of the sonnet. He wrote 154 sonnets; all of which discuss some stage or feature of love. Love was the common theme during the time Shakespeare was writing. However, Shakespeare wrote about it in such a way that captivated his reader and made them want to apply his words to their romances. What readers do not realize while they compare his sonnets to their real life relationships is that Shakespeare was continually defying the conventions of courtly love in his writings.