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The Shakespearean Sonnet Essay

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Shakespeare's language and dialogue signifies a range of human emotions and conditions that are timeless and explain his broad appeal even today. He is highly regarded for his love sonnets which convey an unchanging attitude and consummate romantic imagery that will always exist in the world as long as there are people. He has created words, phrases, and clichés that have become so intrinsic in English language, that many people do not even know they are actually quoting him.

Shakespeare's Sonnet "Let me not to the marriage of true minds" is a perfect example of this and one of the most beautiful love poems of all time. The subject is the immutability of true love. In this sonnet, the author defines love first by telling us what …show more content…

Metaphorically, Shakespeare compares love to a motionless pathfinder which withstands the storm and is not swayed by it, and to a polestar which guides mariners at sea. The ship tossed in the storm, and the star that guides its way are images of great beauty and depth of feeling. The lost ship speaks to each and every individual lost in the sea of our own emotions. The star can be thought of in the astronomical as well as the astrological or metaphysical sense. Although the star's altitude can be measured, its value is immeasurable. The "height" or altitude is its scientifically calculable measure but the "worth" is "unknown."

Shakespeare repeats words to strengthen his proclamation of the immutability of true love. In lines 2-3, "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds," is echoed in line 11, "Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks." The word bends in line 4 recurs later in the "bending sickle" of Time, and the image is so clear of the flower-like charm being struck down by Time.

Time, says Shakespeare, cannot injure true love, although it does ravish beauty. Again, to say it the other way round, if feeling wanes with the passage of Time, then it isn't really love. True love lasts, not only "til death do us part," but until the end of time. The concept of living forever through poetry is echoed in the sonnet "Not Marble, Nor the Gilded Monuments," that through the poem itself, as through all great art, Love is immortalized. Shakespeare

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