Beauty In Christopher Marlowe's The Passionate Shepherd To His Love

In Shakespeare's poem “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” published in 1609, he successfully expresses a few more difficulties of love through a humorous tone. Women are too often held to high beauty standards which Shakespeare strikes down by helping the readers realize that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that nature should not be compared to women in the first place. By making multiple comparisons between his lover and nature Shakespeare focuses on being honest and having realistic standards for his

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.

In life people sometimes face different tribulations that bring them down such as being judged for their physical appearance or even the way they are. Writers in literature who are known to write about romantic things sometimes use this as a way to create things to write about. In sonnet 130, Shakespeare helps us understand that even though his wife has different flaws he still loves her for who she is as a person. Shakespeare uses a critical and judgmental tone to show that even though he compares his mistress to all of these things he still loves her even though her physical appearance isn’t the best.

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.

Although Shakespeare appears to be conforming, he still elevates his work above the exhausted conventions of other Elizabethan sonneteers. Instead of objectifying his lover through trite comparisons, he declares that she is too beautiful and pleasant to be compared even to a day of the most enjoyable season of the year. While most consider the realm of nature to be eternal and that of humans to be transitory, Shakespeare accentuates the death of a season and imbues his sweetheart with everlasting life. He ingeniously inverts the scheme of things in order to grant his love perpetual existence through his poetry.

Throughout the play, Romeo shows readers that teenage love is based solely on looks in act 1.5. He uses a hyperbole to show how taken back he is by Juliet's beauty. When Romeo sees Juliet for the first time, he is instantly attracted to her beauty and says “Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.” (Shakespeare 1.5 55). By using this extreme exaggeration that focuses on Juliet's beauty, Shakespeare shows readers that their relationship is made up only on their looks.

Shakespeare’s use of figurative language in The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet enhances the play and the audience’s experience. When Romeo first sees Juliet at Capulet’s party, he uses an extended metaphor to describe Juliet’s beauty. Talking to a servingman, Romeo says, “So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows, / As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows” (I, v, 46-47). In this metaphor, Romeo is saying that Juliet’s beauty compared to all the other women is as a swan’s beauty when compared to crows. This means that, to Romeo, Juliet is much prettier than any other woman, including Rosaline.

Shakespeare uses figurative language to develop the central idea of the contradiction between love and righteousness. For example, “she will not stay the siege of loving terms, nor bide the encounter of assailing eyes, nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold” (Shakespeare 1.1 210-212). Russell depicts the battle of love revolving around beauty as Shakespeare is describing the girl Romeo is in love with, Rosaline as her avoiding love and hiding her beauty in virginity. Also, “she hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste, for beauty starved with her severity cuts beauty off from all posterity (Shakespeare 1.1 216-218).

In Stephen Book’s edition of the poem, the first lines, “A woman’s face, with nature’s own hand painted, Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion —“ (162), are annotated in regards to the word “with” and “painted”. While distinguishing the meaning of these two words, the editor makes references to Merry Wives of Windsor, a play by Shakespeare, and compares the meaning of “with” in the context of the sonnet to how it is used in his other works. “Painted” is also interpreted to mean colored by way of cosmetics. In a second edition edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones, the sonnet has much fewer punctuation marks and annotates “with” to mean by nature herself, and “painted” to correlate with “superficial beauty” (Duncan-Jones 150). This demonstrates the idea that the when the signifier is changed or standardized, the range of possibilities for the signified is significantly limited.

Outward appearances are not always comparable to inner character. Identity is not the only thing that can be concealed. Penned letters and vocations of love can also be masked and coupled with dishonesty. In Shakespeare’s As you Like It, after Duke Frederick Banished Rosalind from his court, Rosalind disguises herself as a boy named Ganymede and enters the forest of Arden.

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.

Poetry in Elizabethan time was based on courtly love conventions which included conceits and complements. Themes such as the unattainability of the lady, sleeplessness, constancy in love, cruelty of the beloved, renunciation of love, fine passion of the lover versus icy emotions of the beloved, praise of the beloved’s beauty and eternalizing her as being subject of the poem; these all are

The beauty of love is what this passage focuses on, it shows us the love that two young lovers have towards each other. Even though they both know that their love is forbidden, they still love each other deeply. Shakespeare’s writing skills helps the audience connect with the characters with

William Shakespeare is recognized for being one of greatest poets of all time. His works are still popular to this day. Many of his works included extended metaphors and similes with rhetorical language and were rooted in the nature of love. Two of his poems that are rather alike, but also very contrastive are “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” and “My mistresses’ eyes are nothing like the sun.” They both contain a core theme of love or anti-love in some aspects. While these two poems are built around the same type of subject, their interpretations come across in separate ways. In contrast to Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18” which is a serious love poem that contains imagery and metaphors, Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 130” is more negative and humorous but contains imagery and similes.

The passionate shepherd to His love poem is a poem that portrays the basic romanticizing of the country living which describes the nature of the environments and is very sentimental. Christopher’s poem is showing the best fantasy of ordinary romance that would be much better felt in the countryside other than the urban side of the country. Nature is of the essence. The nymph's reply to the shepherd Poem, on the other hand, is based on how he perceives the passionate shepherds to his love. Sir Walter has a different perception of the nature romantics; he presents a contrast in his poem. Christopher Marlowe and Sir Walter Raleigh are having a dialogue which is contradictory dialogue.