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Shakespeare Sonnet 152 Analysis

Decent Essays

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 152 “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” The famous opening line of Shakespeare’s eighteenth sonnet still resounds in today’s educational setting. Little do many students know that William Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets; all of them in the same format. Going through many of Shakespeare’s sonnets, a recurring theme of forbidden and secret love appeared. In his Sonnet 152, Shakespeare desperately pleads with an unknown love about their hidden love and how it affects their surroundings. Often Shakespeare was accused of making fun of other poets and authors of his time period, however this sonnet may have had a correlation with his complicated love life at the time. There is little known about Shakespeare’s love …show more content…

In this sonnet Shakespeare tells this woman, “all my honest faith in thee is lost,” meaning that he no longer is true to her. He then begins to tell of how much he praised and how he had “sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness…thy love, thy truth, thy constancy,” though he knew all along that she was not these things as he states later in the sonnet. Shakespeare knows that he blinded himself in order to place this woman on a pedestal of fabricated perfection. Shakespeare’s feelings are extremely common upon today’s society. This universal sonnet displays how a man or woman feels, or should feel, after breaking a promise of marriage or love to another. Shakespeare’s guilt coincides with the sorrow he feels for himself after realizing that this woman is not perfect – he had only made her perfect in his mind. But isn’t that the case with most adulterers? The only reason they cheat on their wives or husbands is because they let the feeling of lust overcome their heart and good judgment. Once this has occurred, the adulterer attempts to make amends with themselves by saying that the actions they are taking are necessary because their spouse doesn’t make them happy and that this new lover does – fabricated perfection in its fullness. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 152 at first glance seems to be a wretched man wallowing in his adulterous sorrows. However, as one takes a closer look, themes of judgment and

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