Influences of Love: A Comparison of William Shakespeare and Max Martin

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.

Love is a disease. Desire is deadly. When one thinks about Shakespeare’s sonnets, the instinctual response is the thought of romance. For instance the adoring lines, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day/ Thou are more lovely and more temperate” (Sonnet 18, 1-2), are thought to be the most famous words from a Shakespearean sonnet. However, instead of describing love in a starry-eyed fashion, Shakespeare discusses the punitive characteristics of love in Sonnet 147. The persona describes love as an infectious illness caused by sexual appetites. The persona’s mind knows better than to indulge his appetite, but he does not listen to his logic. He begins the sonnet by stating the primary

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

“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.

True love should be timeless. Shakespeare attempts to provide an understanding of what so many people search for but hardly ever find. Instead they get involved in relationships that eventually fail and it's all because they don't really understand what love actually means. To refer to the beginning of the poem, Shakespeare begins with "Let me not ....admit," (1) denying that anything can ever come between true lovers or act as an impediment to their love. Love or "the marriage of true minds" (1) does not weaken when the circumstances given rise to it are changed or "alter when it alteration finds." (3)

Like every marketed love story out there, the poem starts off with two souls who secretly admire each other, yet are too afraid to admit it. In a society that at that time would quite possibly think

The two poems “Magic of Love” by Helen Farries and “Love Poem” by John Frederick Nims are both poems with the central theme of love. The ways that these two authors express this theme differ significantly from each other and show two spectrums of love in literature. Through their use of syntax, diction, rhyme, and meter, these poets portray love in a unique and personal manner that illicit specific emotions from the reader for a variety of possible reasons, which will be analyzed in this essay.

William Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet, elicits sympathy from the reader through the theme of how love can kill. Shakespeare’s use of many literary devices such as metaphor, imagery and symbolism causes this theme to be evident. Therefore, the beauty of love disguises the violence or death it may also cause. The powerful nature of love throughout the poem is easily interpreted through Shakespeare’s use of metaphors.

To see love written in poetry is a common thing. There are copious forms of love as poets throughout the centuries exemplify it to be happy, physical, or even downright delusional. Love can whip its iron cast hand around one’s heart and squeeze the very breath out, or it can invigorate all senses and make one nonsensical. Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18” and Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” uses various formal differences such as metaphors, imagery, and irony in order to portray two ends of the love spectrum: Shakespeare’s being that romantic love is grand and beautiful while Browning offers a more darker glimpse on how obsessive and controlling love can be.

Both poems, " My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun" and "How Do I Love Thee?", each express their love in two different ways. In "My mistress` eyes are nothing like the sun", is a Shakespearean sonnet that gives ridiculous comparisons of his mistress that he loves so much. "How Do I Love Thee?", is another sonnet about love. The poet talks about her hopes of the love she has for her husband will last forever even after death.   Though "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun" uses more figure of speech to describe his love,", Shakespeare give off a parody like love poem.

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 movie that is being compared to a story here is one of the all-time best. The main theme portrayed in "Shakespeare in Love" is a love that is never meant to be. "Shakespeare in Love" parallels the play Shakespeare is currently working on, Romeo and Juliet, in which love is not meant to be due to the many obstacles in the way. Shakespeare's life in the film is very comparable to Romeo's life in Romeo and Juliet. William Shakespeare's life in the film and the play he is writing has several similarities and differences. In my opinion, this is one of the best movies and books to compare.

Shakespeare in Love, a fictional love story about the worldwide celebrated English poet,playwright and actor William Shakespeare, in which Will Shakespeare is a young and poor playwright and is struggling to write his latest play, Romeo and Ethyl, the Pirate´s Daughter. He feels the need and craves for passion and love to inspire his writing. The casting is already running and Will is looking for the best actors that are up to his expectations, and that he find in Thomas Kent. But what will does yet not know is that Thomas Kent in fact is a beautiful lady named Viola de Lesseps, the daughter of a highly respected and rich family.

During the English Renaissance, there was a bloom of literature, fueled by the advent of the printing press and the patronage of the nobility. Beginning with Petrarch’s popularization of the Italian form, the sonnet became the English mainstay for portrayals of love. The progression of the Renaissance saw the experience of love detailed in many different ways through form, allegory, allusion, and metaphor. The fashioning of the love object in sonnets varies from writer to writer and progresses from an outward, ethereal love to an inward love, rooted in reality as the centuries progressed. Petrarchan love objects are larger than life—holy in nature, whilst anti-Petrarchan loves are human and flawed. Poets of this time grappled with the Platonic conventions of love: What does love mean on the grand scale? What constitutes the ideal experience? Is love a reflection of the holy, or is it a reflection of our most base human qualities? Each poet crafted their image of the love object in varying ways: Francesco Petrarch wrote an idol, Edmund Spenser wrote a genuine, yet ideal woman, William Shakespeare catered to harsh realism, and Lady Mary Wroth wrote of a stormy, imperfect lover.

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.