Lust and the Degeneration of Man Exposed in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 129

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.

Within sonnet 116, Shakespeare personifies the abstract noun of love when he states ‘Whose worth’s unknown’. Through personifying his ideology of true love, it makes it increasingly

Lust, which is probably one of the most confusing types of love was an apparent subject in twelfth night.There are many reasons why one would lust, one could be because you are attracted to a specific quality of a person or could maybe only like there looks or even just thing like there charisma. Shakespeare showed lust between Orsino and Olivia. Even though Orsino had not met or even seen Olivia, he was still madly in love

One of love’s most prominent characteristics is its ability to engulf the human mind in floods of pure emotion. In the short term, love is often associated with phrases such as hearts “skipping a beat” or “butterflies” in one’s stomach. As an act of intuition and instinct, love can have immediate physiological and psychological effects. As a result, love’s psychosomatic manifestations often lead their bewitched to direct as many efforts as possible toward winning another’s heart. With regard to this motif of physical and emotional infatuation, Shakespeare argues, being in love causes us to become inconsistent and to allow ourselves to be buffeted by the wild waves of our ever-changing desires. In the play,

A Midsummer Night’s Dream portrays love as being unstable and fickle, while Sonnet 116 portrays love as priceless and unfaltering. In William Shakespeare’s comedy, A

A prominent playwright known for his romantic productions is William Shakespeare. It is evident that the topic of love is brought up many times in Romeo and Juliet. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, love is presented as an aggressive force that overpowers all other values and desires. This can be compared to the idea that love is very powerful in Diane Ackerman’s “Love’s Vocabulary”, and contrasted to the idea that love is gentle in I Corinthians 13:4-8. Shakespeare’s idea of love is similar to

Love, before we can talk about it we must define it; then we can dissect it and reference it. Love is defined in the dictionary as an intense feeling of deep affection. Throughout several of Shakespeare’s plays he speaks about love. It is a common theme throughout Shakespeare’s plays, both comedies and tragedies, and we can see that Shakespeare is infatuated with love. Shakespeare and I, though poles apart, raised in different times, places, and even of different genders have one thing in common; we both seem to be hopeless romantics. In Shakespeare’s plays love seems like a very obtainable reality, love conquers all if you believe in it and fight for it. This seems to go against societal structure in a time where marriages were arranged

Lust is defined as the desire or attraction to something, often in the form of sex. Chivalry and courtly love puts the woman at a higher position than the man, basing the relationship on loyalty rather than sex. On the spectrum of love, these two types are polar opposite ways in treating a woman. In medieval times, lust often fails, as chivalric love is rarer and heavily desired from a woman’s perspective. Rapper Kendrick Lamar exclaims, “we lust on the same routine of shame...lust turn[s] into fear,” and in Chaucer’s “The Miller’s Prologue and Tale,” the lust of common characters bring only shame on themselves, but in “the Knight’s Tale,” the relationship held on chivalric love create a perfect balance.

In many of Shakespeare’s sonnets, he emphasizes the subjective experience of love; however, he never wallows in his feelings to a conceited extent. Actually, he labels narcissism as incompatible with real love in some of his other sonnets and in his comedy Twelfth Night. Although his narcissistic characters, especially Malvolio, Orsino (from his comedy), and the Young Man (from his sonnets), believe themselves to be experiencing passion, their foolish self-indulgence inhibits them from finding true love, as it causes them to act contrary to nature and mistaking other desires as love. Conversely, other characters not blocked by vanity, like Viola and the Speaker of the Sonnets, can find actual love, since they correctly understand themselves

The lesson to be learned in this specific sonnet is the idea of the immortality of literature. The entire poem is masked by the idea of praise for the addressee. The language of the poem, the destructiveness, suggests the survivability of the poem itself. Shakespeare is using

   In "Sonnet 46" of his works about the blond young man, William Shakespeare presents a unique view on the classic debate about physical lust versus emotional love. The poet struggles to decide if his feelings are based upon superficial desire and infatuation, represented by the "eye" (1), or true love independent of the physical world, symbolized by the "heart" (1). With a deft movement from violent imagery in the first two lines to the civilized language of law, Shakespeare dismisses the commonly accepted view of a battle between the eye and the heart.  The diction of warfare denotes two very separate alien sides clashing in destructive confrontation.

Sonnet 129 is about the sin of lust and the actions and feelings that correspond with it. The author tells a story of sorts, outlining the feelings one goes through before, during, and after indulging in lust. It tells of the urge before, the bliss during, and the regret and shame after. The author states that although men know the unhealthy cycle, they continue to take part in it. Underlying, however, is the speaker’s own struggles within lust. The speaker feels great religious guilt and shame for his sin. Moreover, the act of lust itself as well and his fear, and regret surrounding it, drive the speaker towards madness that he attempts to remedy by finding a logical solution to this human struggle.

“Sonnet 130” written by William Shakespeare, is one of his most well known poems and can be analyzed and broken apart in great depth. The poem is written in fourteen lines which makes it a sonnet. Like all of Shakespeare’s sonnets the meter is iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme for “Sonnet 130” is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. An overlaying theme for “Sonnet 130” is, “True love is based on how beautiful you find someone on the inside.” Shakespeare proves to have a great view on true love in this sonnet. He cares more about what’s on the inside rather than what’s on the outside. “Sonnet 130’s” theme can be proven by Shakespeare's use of poetic and literary devices, the tone and mood of the sonnet, and the motif of true love.

During the Renaissance period, most poets were writing love poems about their lovers/mistresses. The poets of this time often compared love to high, unrealistic, and unattainable beauty. Shakespeare, in his sonnet 18, continues the tradition of his time by comparing the speakers' love/mistress to the summer time of the year. It is during this time of the year that the flowers and the nature that surround them are at there peak for beauty. The theme of the poem is to show the speakers true interpretation of beauty. Beauties worst enemy is time and although beauty might fade it can still live on through a person's memory or words of a poem. The speaker realizes that beauty, like the subject of the poem, will remain perfect not in the

Shakespeare, who wrote the sonnets in 1609, expresses his own feelings through his greatest work of literature. The theme of love in the poems reflect thoughts from the Renaissance period. Love is one of many components of Shakespeare’s life shown in the sonnets. Love can be defined in many ways other than a strong affection for a lover. In Shakespeare’s sonnets, the concept of love can be seen through many uncommon means such as the love of life before death in “Sonnet 73,” love in marriage in “Sonnet 116,” love through sexual desire in “Sonnet 129,” and love through nature in “Sonnet 130,” proving that love can be expressed through many different feelings and emotions.