The Interpretation Of Love In Shakespeare's Sonnet 138 By William Shakespeare

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.

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 has the capability to change everything about a person’s life. My life was changed by love on the day I was born, and it continues to be changed by love today in various ways. Whether it is the love of a family member or the love of a significant other, love is able to alter a person’s life in the best way. However, there is a difference between love and true love. “Sonnet 116,” by William Shakespeare, captures the meaning of true love because true love is a constant, eternal, and guiding force, which has been proved true in my life.

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

The ideas of love being expressed in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and Sonnet 130 are genuinely contrasting. In Much Ado About Nothing, one of the many focal points are Beatrice and Benedick’s foolish relationship, also the most captivating, whereas in Sonnet 130, Shakespeare is talking about the misrepresentation of the “Dark Lady”, who he refers to as his mistress. Regardless of a person’s flaws disfigurements, the stress they cause, and the bickering that occurs, love can withstand time, and under the circumstances love doesn’t change for anyone, that it does not substitute itself when it finds differences in the loved one.

“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.

Sonnets 127-154 are addressed to the “dark lady” (hereafter the mistress). Shakespeare’s relations to his mistress vacillate; sometimes sanguine, tender, teasing, or bitterly anger; yet it is a simpler relation than that

Unlike Sonnet 18, Shakespeare utterly abandons the poetic convention of Petrarchan conceit in Sonnet 130. In this poem, Shakespeare denies his mistress all of the praises Renaissance poets customarily attributed to their lovers. The first quatrain is filled exclusively with the Shakespeare's seeming insults of his mistress. While Sir Thomas Wyatt authors a poem entitled "Avising the Bright Beams of These Fair Eyes," in the first line of Sonnet 130, Shakespeare affirms that his "mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun." John Wootton, in a poem published in England's Helicon, boasts that his love has "lips like scarlet of the finest dye," but in Sonnet 130 , Shakespeare is sure that his beloved's lips are not nearly quite as red as coral (11; 2). Michael Drayton, in his poem, To His Coy Love, begs his lover, "Show me no more those snowy

Shakespeare's use of putting pictures in your mind and physical things that refer to ideas or emotions in 14-line poem 116 hints that love is a constant feeling of love, hate, guilt, etc., which never gives up to time. Love is a feeling of love, hate, and guilt, which all of us have an idea of. In fact, a lot of us may even have experienced what we thought of to be true love. However, does such thing mixed in the level of this feeling of love, hate, and guilt actually exist, and if it does are we able to define it? This is something that William Shakespeare feels strongly about in 'Sonnet 116'.

What is love? Is it an object? Is it a feeling? Is it even attainable? Love is everything, it is an object, it is an emotion, and it cannot be bought, stolen, given. Love can only be found. Love is discovered in the most unthinkable places during the most unimaginable times. It can never be predicted who you fall in love with or when you do but all you do know is that you are in love and you would give anything for that person, and for your love to always stay resilient through all other obstacles and distractions. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Montague’s and Capulet’s are know and expected to hate each other until the miracle of love presented its self. Romeo is a Montague and Juliet is a Capulet. They both fell in love when

Each poem reflects the emotions that Shakespeare experiences with the duality of his love. Although each of these poems only show one half of this duality, "Sonnet 144" expresses both while giving a further basis for the understanding of "Sonnet 116" and "Sonnet 147." "Sonnet 144" opens with the line "Two loves I have of comfort and despair," (1). When used as a foundation, this opening line reveals that the reader can expect one of the two sonnets to deal with the comfort of love while the other deals with the despair of love. Shakespeare goes on to say, "The better angel is a man right fair, / The worser spirit a woman, colored ill." (144.3-4) which shows that he considers his young friend to be the comfort aspect of love and his dark woman to be the despair aspect of love. Shakespeare goes on to say that the dark woman tempted his young friend from his side. This shows that an affair has occurred between the young man and the dark woman. Taking this poem as a basis, the reader can better understand how "Sonnet 116" deals with the comfort of love and how "Sonnet 147" deals with the despair of love.

Truth and honesty are key elements to a good, healthy relationship. However, in Shakespeare's Sonnet 138, the key to a healthy relationship between the speaker and the Dark Lady is keeping up the lies they have constructed for one another. Through wordplay Shakespeare creates different levels of meaning, in doing this, he shows the nature of truth and flattery in relationships.

Shakespeare was a superb philosopher, but in his sonnets, he was a philosopher of love.  Shakespeare sets forth the experiences of love and its torments fully within his sonnets.  The philosophy of love is that, love reconciles all.  Love is the evil and the good, the lies and the truth.  Love is all there is. It passion as well as deception and lies.

The majority of Elizabethan sonnets reflect two major themes: time and love. William Shakespeare, too, followed this convention, producing 154 sonnets, many of which deal with the usual theme of love. Because the concept of love is in itself so immense, Shakespeare found several ways to capture the essence of his passion. Therefore, in his poetry he explored various methods and used them to describe the emotions associated with his love for a mysterious "dark lady." These various ideas and views resulted in a series of sonnets that vibrantly depicts his feelings of true, undying love for his lady. Instead of making the topic less interesting, as some might expect, Shakespeare's myriad approaches

In Shakespeare’s Sonnets, the pain experienced emotionally and physically contributes to the realistic nature of his words. Specifically addressing the Dark Lady, the speaker expresses a more mature love unlike the relationship between him and the young man. Readers are warned about the dangers of lust in the love triangle, but the speaker is content with the Dark Lady’s affairs rather than the young man’s. In Sonnet 138, the speaker says, “On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed/But wherefore say not I that I am old?/Oh love’s best habit is in seeming trust” (8-10). In their relationship, love is therefore a mutual understanding of deception. The Dark Lady ignores that he is old and considers him to be young and the speaker ignores that she is cheating on him by not bringing up her faithfulness. What ties these two characters together is