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Shakespeare sonnets to compare and contrast
Comparing two sonnets
Shakespearean Imagery in Sonnets
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Compare William Shakespeare’s Sonnets 12 and 73
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) wrote a group of 154 sonnets between
1592 and 1597, which were compiled and published under the title
'Shakespeare's Sonnets' in 1609. The 154 poems are divided into two
groups, a larger set, consisting of sonnets 1-126 which are addressed
by the poet to a dear young man, the smaller group of sonnets 127-154
address another persona, a 'dark lady'. The larger set of sonnets
display a deliberate sequence, a sonnet cycle akin to that used a
decade earlier by the English poet Phillip Sidney (1554-1586) in
'Astrophel and Stella'. The themes of love and infidelity are dominant
in both sets of poems, in the larger grouping; these themes are
interwoven with symbols of beauty, immortality, and the ravages of
time. Lyrical speculations of poetry's power to maintain bonds of love
and to revere the beloved can also be found in the larger collection
of sonnets.
Due to the great amount of Shakespeare's work and its consistent
quality, his particular style became known as 'the Shakespearean
sonnet form'. A typical Shakespearean sonnet has fourteen lines,
broken down into three quatrains and ending with a rhyming couplet. In
each quatrain a different subject will be conversed and described, the
subject is then changed at the start of each new quatrain. The
quatrain allows the theme of the sonnet to be developed. The ending
couplet allows what was discussed in the forerunning quatrains to be
resolved. A Shakespearean sonnet has the rhyming pattern
ABABCDCDEFEFGG.
Sonnet 12 talks about how time changes the body's image, it also sees
the writer thinking about death quite bluntly. He only seems to see
that life is short and one life must...
... middle of paper ...
...tes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.
Sonnet 73
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
steals away/ Their sharpness, ere he is aware.” (4-8) More over, the poem indicates clear
Thus the typical rhyme scheme for the English sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg.
As far as structure goes, Shakespeare’s sonnet and my own are very similar. My 14-line sonnet is written in Iambic Pentameter and follows the abab-cdcd-efef-gg rhyme scheme within three quatrains and a couplet, as does that of Shakespeare. For this reason, my poem follows a meter very close to Sonnet 87. This is also due to the fact that both sonnets contain 10 syllables per line, as well as an eleventh in most lines that derives from weak, or "feminine" verb endings such as "keeping" in the first line of my poem, and "possessing" in that of Shakespeare. Thus, the finality residing in the 10 syllable lines that use masculine endings is accounted for. In addition, my sonnet mirrors Sonnet 87 by starting with "farewell" and ending with Shakespeare’s couplet modified, and one can see his influence in the third quatrain of my poem, which echoes back the last 4 lines of Sonnet 87’s third quatrain. In this way, I was able to mimic most of Shakespeare’s structure while inserting phrases of my own.
A sonnet is a fixed patterned poem that expresses a single, complete thought or idea. Sonnet comes from the Italian word “sonetto”, which means “little song”. Poem, on the other hand, is English writing that has figurative language, and written in separate lines that usually have a repeated rhyme, but don’t all the time. The main and interesting thing is that these two poems or sonnets admire and compare the beauty of a specific woman, with tone, repetition, imagery, and sense of sound.
This sonnet is so famous that it almost makes commentary unessential. It will always be one of the best sonnets in the history of language. The lively and rapid passage of time, which brings every thing to an end, is described, not indeed in abundance, but with such noteworthy and overwhelming effect that humanity almost stares us in the face as we read it. The logic of the lines ends with the line itself is like the ticking of a clock or the unstoppable motion of a pendulum as it swings from side to side. The importance of the placing of this sonnet here (12) (I believe it’s because of the twelve hours of the day) as well as that of the 'minute' sonnet at (60) is hard to establish, but at the very least it points to an organized hand, which, like the clock itself, measures out the chain of important events as they occur. It is true, however, that it is not clear that we have Shakespeare’s order, so this is just my opinion.
Another metaphor in this sonnet is the comparison of death to nightfall, "In me thou seest the twilight of such day" (568). He continues, "Which by and by black night doth take away, death's second self, that seals up all rest" (568). Shakespeare perfectly describes death as the fading of a bright day to a dark black night.
Sonnet 18 and Sonnet 130, by William Shakespeare, are two of the most well known Shakespeare sonnets. Both are similar in theme, however, the two poems are very much contradictory in style, purpose, and the muse to who Shakespeare is writing.
All Shakespearean sonnets have the same poetic structure. They consist of fourteen lines divided into three quatrains and a couplet. They also all contain the same rhyme scheme, which is: abab cdcd efef gg. Punctuation is also an
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.
This sonnet rhymed abab cdcd efef gg form. Most of his sonnets were written in the 1590s at the height of the vogue, but they were not published until 1609. The first 126 are addressed to a young man; the remainder (with the exception of the last two, which are conventional sonnets on Cupid) are addressed to an unknown "Dark Lady." Whether or not Shakespeare laid bare his heart in his sonnets, as many critics have contended, they are his most personal poems.
Shakespeare sonnets, also called English sonnets, are the second most common sonnets. It takes the structure of three quatrains, that is, three stanzas with four lines and a couplet that is a two line stanza. The couplet stanza is pivotal in the sonnet, because it provides amplification, a refutation or a conclusion of the other three stanzas, which creates an epiphany for the sonnet. The other kind of sonnet is the Spenserian, which has the first 12 lines rhyming into a, b, c and d, while the last stanza, which is a couplet has the rhyme, ee. The three quatrains provide detail about three but related ideas while the couplet gives rise to a totally different idea (Petrarca & ...
The ritual of courtly love had rigid codes of conduct associated with it. Shakespeare took his writing to new levels by subtly defying the codes of conduct and relating courtly love to relationships between both two men and a man and a woman. Shakespeare addresses his first 126 sonnets to the same fair man. Sonnet 18, by far one of the most famous of Shakespeare's sonnets, was written to illustrate his love and adoration for the man. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Most of the sonnets went into a dialogue and rhymes ended a scene (Burbank 13). Only three of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets do not conform to his structure; Sonnet 99, which has fifthteen lines, Sonnet 126, which has twelve lines and Sonnet 145, which is written in Iambic Tetrameter (Mabillard). Many of Shakespeare's sonnets got published, though he did not live to see the First Folio of his plays which was published in 1623. ( “Life of William”) Shakespeare also wrote in rhyme.
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
He wrote poems and sonnets which were adored greatly. In his lifetime, Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets around 1592 to 1598. Sonnet 18 is widely known as one of Shakespeare 's greatest sonnet. Sonnet 18 is memorable for the subject matter, in which the poet 's feelings reach a level of rapture unseen in the previous sonnets. The poet abandons his quest for the youth to have a child, and instead glories in the youth 's beauty. Another one of Shakespeare’s greatest sonnets include Sonnet 30. This takes a toll on ageing and love, while Shakespeare describes the very little things that people agonize over as they descend into old