A Comparison between To His Coy Mistress and Sonnet 116 Essay

Within To His Coy Mistress we see the manipulation in which the speaker uses for his own benefit through the personification of time, ‘Had we but World enough and Time’ expressing, through the personification of ‘Time’, how he would love the potential lover and wouldn’t mind her initial rejection if time was an endless matter. This attempt of flattery, seen

fate of the lovers will be, as well as the state of his own feelings

‘To His Coy Mistress’ was written by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678). The poem is a metaphysical poem, which was mostly used in the seventeenth century and was classed as a highly intellectual type of poetry and mainly expressed the complexities of love and life; just as this poem is. In brief the poem is about seizing every opportunity in life and not caring about the past or future. In other words ‘seize the day’. The poem also explores the nature of seduction.

Shakespeare’s sonnet 130, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” and Pablo Neruda’s “My ugly love” are popularly known to describe beauty in a way hardly anyone would write: through the truth. It’s a common fact that modern lovers and poets speak or write of their beloved with what they and the audience would like to hear, with kind and breathtaking words and verses. Yet, Shakespeare and Neruda, honest men as they both were, chose to write about what love truly is, it matters most what’s on the inside rather than the outside. The theme of true beauty and love are found through Shakespeare and Neruda’s uses of imagery, structure, and tone.

is for Shakespeare to write this poem for a girl or woman he likes, to

Shakespeare examines love in two different ways in Sonnets 116 and 130. In the first, love is treated in its most ideal form as an uncompromising force (indeed, as the greatest force in the universe); in the latter sonnet, Shakespeare treats love from a more practical aspect: it is viewed simply and realistically without ornament. Yet both sonnets are justifiable in and of themselves, for neither misrepresents love or speaks of it slightingly. Indeed, Shakespeare illustrates two qualities of love in the two sonnets: its potential and its objectivity. This paper will compare and contrast the two sonnets by Shakespeare and show how they represent two different attitudes to love.

William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 116” and Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Love Is Not All” both attempt to define love, by telling what love is and what it is not. Shakespeare’s sonnet praises love and speaks of love in its most ideal form, while Millay’s poem begins by giving the impression that the speaker feels that love is not all, but during the unfolding of the poem we find the ironic truth that love is all. Shakespeare, on the other hand, depicts love as perfect and necessary from the beginning to the end of his poem. Although these two authors have taken two completely different approaches, both have worked to show the importance of love and to define it. However, Shakespeare is most confident of his definition of love, while Millay seems

The speaker in Andrew Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress'; is a man who is addressing a silent listener, who happens to be his mistress. In this dramatic monologue the speaker tries to explain his feelings to his mistress. The speaker uses many allusions to empires and other objects, events and ideas that are not directly related to his feelings, in order to explain how he feels. He uses these allusions to exaggerate his feelings in order to clearly show them. After reading over the poem once, you get a sense of what the speaker is feeling. Upon further analysis of the poem you realize that the allusions used in the poem, are in fact, what makes this poem so interesting.

“Sonnet 116” written by William Shakespeare is focusing on the strength and true power of love. Love is a feeling that sustainable to alterations, that take place at certain points in life, and love is even stronger than a breakup because separation cannot eliminate feelings. The writer makes use of metaphors expressing love as a feeling of mind not just heart as young readers may see it. To Shakespeare love is an immortal felling that is similar to a mark on a person’s life.

Sonnets 127-154 are addressed to the “dark lady” (hereafter the mistress). Shakespeare’s relations to his mistress vacillate; sometimes sanguine, tender, teasing, or bitterly anger; yet it is a simpler relation than that

Unlike Sonnet 18, Shakespeare utterly abandons the poetic convention of Petrarchan conceit in Sonnet 130. In this poem, Shakespeare denies his mistress all of the praises Renaissance poets customarily attributed to their lovers. The first quatrain is filled exclusively with the Shakespeare's seeming insults of his mistress. While Sir Thomas Wyatt authors a poem entitled "Avising the Bright Beams of These Fair Eyes," in the first line of Sonnet 130, Shakespeare affirms that his "mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun." John Wootton, in a poem published in England's Helicon, boasts that his love has "lips like scarlet of the finest dye," but in Sonnet 130 , Shakespeare is sure that his beloved's lips are not nearly quite as red as coral (11; 2). Michael Drayton, in his poem, To His Coy Love, begs his lover, "Show me no more those snowy

In both poems there is the recurrent theme of irony. In “To His Coy Mistress” the poem’s entire first section is ironic in the sense that the speaker knows he isn’t being genuine. The speaker uses words to his advantage and we can take little of what he says to be truthful. In Line 1, “Had we but world enough, and time”. The first section of the poem is a series of hyperbolic statements meant to impress and flatter the reader but the

The title of the poem “My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun” suggests that the speaker is not in love with his ‘mistress’. However, this is not the case. Shakespeare uses figurative language by using criticizing hyperboles to mock the traditional love sonnet. Thus, showing not only that the ideal woman is not always a ‘goddess’, but mocking the way others write about love. Shakespeare proves that love can be written about and accomplished without the artificial and exuberant. The speaker’s tone is ironic, sarcastic, and comical turning the traditional conceit around using satire. The traditional iambic pentameter rhyming scheme of the sonnet makes the diction fall into place as relaxed, truthful, and with elegance in the easy flowing verse. In turn, making this sonnet one of parody and real love.

     The sonnet, being one of the most traditional and recognized forms of poetry, has been used and altered in many time periods by writers to convey different messages to the audience. The strict constraints of the form have often been used to parallel the subject in the poem. Many times, the first three quatrains introduce the subject and build on one another, showing progression in the poem. The final couplet brings closure to the poem by bringing the main ideas together. On other occasions, the couplet makes a statement of irony or refutes the main idea with a counter statement. It leaves the reader with a last impression of what the author is trying to say.

William Shakespeare’s comprehensive imagery and details contribute to a perfect representation of Elizabethan court life. Strangely, little is known about the true identity of the prolific writer. Through countless conspiracy theories and historians digging through records and examining every word used, Shakespeare is simply invisible. Historians believe identifying Shakespeare’s characters in his masterpieces will bring them a step closer to his true identity. Trouble is, Shakespeare’s characters also are conflicting and this creates a never-ending cycle of theories. Since most sonnets, which were read in sequence, have been thought to be autobiographical, Shakespeare’s Sonnets create a bit of hope. In Shakespeare’s Sonnets, the Dark Lady