Love and Lust in the Lyrics (Shakespeare's Sonnets)

Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets in his lifetime; the 56 sonnets being one of many. This sonnet in particular addresses a “fair youth”. Love is one of the major themes throughout the sonnets, as seen in Sonnets 1, 18, and 29, as well as many other works. Shakespeare is very well known in the literary community for his precise word choice, which often has deeper meaning than simply surface level. Throughout Sonnet 56, Shakespeare uses literary techniques such as comparison, personification, and symbolism to portray the meaning and emotion of love.

Finally, the couplet provides an overall conclusion of the preceding lines and gives a definite ending to the poem. The speaker depicts the story of himself and his lover in the first three quatrains with curt language that allow less of the reader’s personal imagination than do imagery and metaphors. This serves to simplify the powerful role of structure, allowing the speaker to fully pull the reader into the sonnet and clearly focus on the characters and the overall message.

Compare the methods the poets use to explore the ideas about love in ‘Sonnet 43’ and ‘Sonnet 116’

Sonnet 116 is about love in its most ideal form. The first four lines, or the first quatrain, show that love is constant and will not “alter when it alteration finds” (l. 3). The lines that comes after that say true love is indeed an “ever-fixed mark” (l. 5) that can make it through anything. Shakespeare claims that we can measure love, “whose worth’s unknown” (ll. 7-8), only to a degree or not in an understandable way. The perfect nature of love is unshakeable throughout time, and it remains so “even to the edge of doom,” (l. 12) or death. In the couplet, he declares that if he is wrong about the constant, unmovable nature of love then he must take back his writings on love. He states that if he has judged love in the wrong way, no individual has ever loved.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is regarded as a literary great, recognised for his many plays that still feature in many educational syllabuses across the world. He has also received adulation for his poetry and sonnets. This essay works on the basis that there are two individual specifications of love; lust and true love. Definitions of these loves can be found embedded within several sonnets and will be explored further on in this essay. Other types of love could also be distinguished and analysed within Shakespeare's collection of sonnets, however, for the purposes of this composition to achieve in depth analysis, the two most prevailing types of love will be focussed on. This essay will seek to determine Shakespeare's definition of both

Shakespeare, considerably one of the greatest writers in the history of literature, has produced and published hundreds of romanticized sonnets and various breathtaking plays. Nowadays, many high school and college students spend their time reading, analyzing, and interpreting Shakespearian works trying to understand his intricate vernacular. Many phrases, names, and references in his compositions are still controversial. However, as Shakespeare’s writings are further analyzed, we begin to see more about who he was as a person and what role he played in society. Two examples of his true personality include him writing several romantic sonnets to another man and writing humorously obscene plays.

Love comes in many colors. The blood-crimson of lust and the jade-green of jealously are but two of the vast palate required to paint this inescapable human passion. William Shakespeare’s store of colors is unrivaled. No human failing, foible or foolishness escapes his gentle, comedic reproof. He equally enjoins his audience to venture as bravely as he does into the palpable horror of love gone amiss. In “OTHELLO,”“MACBETH,” and many more dramas, love’s fatal potential to provoke vengeance or the quest for earthly power is powerfully felt. These are epic investigations of love’s progression. A sonnet, however, is the equivalent of the modern short story. It is a snapshot of a single, significant experience. In two of Shakespeare’s sonnets – diverse in time and temperament, but complimentary in their conclusions – Shakespeare states his deepest feelings about the potential for a human love that is an un-judgmental commitment to the selfless nourishment of a partner. Sonnet 116, with a certainty and wisdom obtained from experience and suffering, marches out a rigorous and profound definition of true love. Sonnet 29 finds a soul in turmoil salvaged by an epiphany of understanding the power of true love to heal. By examining the perspective of the respective speakers, their individual progresses, the themes evoked and the poetic devices employed to compliment content this essay argues that for Shakespeare, true and enduring

During the Shakespearean period love was presented in several different ways. Love was sometimes portrayed as a war between two lovers and sometimes used to profess admiration to a lover. In Sonnet 130, Shakespeare redefined what love poems were, by making his poem a parody of the conventional love poems that were written by poets in the sixteenth to seventeenth century. Prior to this poem, love poems were praised for their romantic appeals where more often than not they praised women for their beauty and god like appearance. This poem was known to be one of Shakespeare’s most famous sonnets because of its central idea that love is not only physical attraction. In the typical love poems women were described to have flawless skin, rosy cheeks and were admired by everyone in their society, while this poem particularly has a different tone to it. It mocks the typical love poems by stating his honest feelings towards his lover.

William Shakespeare is one of the most celebrated poets in the world. During his career he began to notice his celebrity status, and it became evident in his work. Shakespeare’s sonnets do not portray a love of their subject, they actually portray his ego. The language, mood and treatment of the subject are the elements of the portrayal. First of all, the language used in Shakespeare’s sonnets is not romanticizing; it is egotistical.

The theme of Shakespeare’s 29th sonnet is how he feels like a social outcast and is depressed. But when he thinks of a certain person’s love, he feels happy, and it takes him

Two hundred years had passed between the sonnets of Petrarch and the reign of Queen Elizabeth. As a form and structure for poetic life, the sonnet had grown hard. Fourteen lines of rhymed iambic pentameter remained pregnant with possibilities and vitality, but must the sense turn after the octave and resolve in the sestet? Love remained in some ways inexpressible without this basic verse form, but something wasn’t right. Too many rose red lips and too much snow white skin belonging to unattainable lovers did not communicate the prevailing amorous imagination. The conventions were a little too conventional. The metaphors were gone somewhat stale.

Through different types of readings of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 146, the reader is able to access the depth and difference in meaning among the alternate readings. The general reading of Sonnet 146 allows the reader to experience the inner-emotions are meaning behind the text, of the struggle and battle between the speakers soul and the earthly indulgences he immorally takes advantage of at the expense of his soul’s immortality. However the contextual reading presents are new argument to the sonnet, where it can be analysed differently to a general reading. In Shakespearean time sonnets were ultimately love poems, as Sonnet 146 appears to stand out from the rest as the speaker talks of his soul’s immortality and not of love. Although by understanding the context of the time the sonnet was written, scholars have come to understand, there may have been another meaning behind the sonnet, one referencing the speakers love for his mistress and how she is the centre of the sinfulness of earth, the speaker pities his lover as sees her morality and knows he must leave her, in order for his soul to be made merciful. Through the different readings of the text the reader is able to interpreted and understand how they present an alternative connotation.

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.

Nearly 400 years after his death, the works of William Shakespeare have become well-renowned. One could say that through his work, the subjects of which he wrote and the author himself have become immortalized, receiving acclaim from scholars around the world. One such collection of work that has gained fame and admiration is his sonnets. Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets have received much speculation and criticism over the years regarding their intent and subjects. Although some believe Shakespeare to be the narrator of the sonnets, with the perspective and views reflecting his personal life and feelings, others believe him to have written the sonnets from the invented narrator’s perspective. The subject of the sonnets receives similar speculation, with some critics claiming the male subject of many of the sonnets to be a lover of Shakespeare’s rather than a friend for whom he had great admiration and respect. Shakespeare’s remarkable usage of poetic structure and devices provide readers with a great insight to his true intention of the sonnets, such as that of Sonnet 55.

English poet William Shakespeare is known for his astounding works around the world. Sonnets are beautifully constructed and rear lasting truths about the world we live in. All of Shakespeare’s sonnets are in the form of an English sonnet. He used this method so frequently that it has coined the term the Shakspearian sonnet. Shakespeare has written a collection of 154 sonnets’, the first 126 sonnets address a young man and the last, about a woman (About…). It is believed that Shakespeare was a bisexual; a lifestyle not accepted in that period. Three of his most popular works were chosen to exemplify the overall theme. Sonnets 18, 29 and 116 were chosen from the 154 others because they are a few of the most popular of his works in this form. The individual theme, tone through diction, and meaning of the poems will be analysed to prove Shakespeare’s works are about the idealized power of love and immortalizing the subject.