William Shakespeare 's Sonnet 18 And 130

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.

In "Sonnet 18," Shakespeare shows his audience that his love will be preserved through his "eternal lines" of poetry by comparing his love and poetry with a summer's day. Shakespeare then uses personification to emphasize these comparisons and make his theme clearer to his audience. Shakespeare also uses repetition of single words and ideas throughout the sonnet in order to stress the theme that his love and poetry are eternal, unlike other aspects of the natural world. Using the devices of metaphor, personification, repetition, and progression of tone, Shakespeare reveals his theme that the natural world is imperfect and transitory while his love is made eternal through his lines of poetry.

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

In Shakespeare’s poem, Sonnet 18, he describes his perspective of love. Using symbolism, he compares a women to the beauty of a summer’s day. By expressing and explaining why he makes this comparison he conceives a cheerful mood. Although the beauty of a summer's day is lovely, it does has its downfalls, and shakespeare elaborates on this later in the poem.

‘Sonnet 116’ by William Shakespeare and ‘What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, And Where, And Why” by Edna St. Vincent Millay are both sonnets that discuss companionship and a glimpse of the poets’ experiences. In ‘Sonnet 116’, Shakespeare illustrates how capability is weakened by its metaphysical stereotype and ideals such as, love which never seems to wither away according to Shakespeare while on the contrary, in ‘What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, And Where, And Why” Millay feeds on the chaos between the ideal of love and its harsh reality, heartbreak. Both poets seem to be love struck but there is a significant difference in the two. I will compare and contrast ‘Sonnet 116’ by William Shakespeare and ‘What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, And Where, And Why” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. I will also inquire and analyze why this particular form of poetry established different effects.

Close reading of poetry provides insights that assist in its interpretation and possible meanings behind the words. Close reading requires consideration of genre, imagery, word choice, and figures of speech in order to develop an interpretation, understanding, and appreciation of poetry not available through distant reading. When first reading, “My Mistress' Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun” written by William Shakespeare it appeared a bit strange and confusing. Due to close reading, I developed a deeper understanding and appreciation for “My Mistress' Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun” as sarcastic, and humorous in a somewhat ironic and mocking manner with an overall entertaining quality.

Sonnet 116 entirely talks about what love is and what it isn't. The first quatrain talks about how love is never changing and if it is it is not true love. Then in the second part he states that love survives all of the hardships that is brought to it. It helps bring people to peace. The third quatrain discusses what love is not. Love does not fade because of time spent together or ones looks. It does not alter its self even at times of great danger. The final couplet finally states that if all that the author says above is not true then he has never loved before.

What humans call love is simply a chemical reaction that compels animals to mate. Various works of art, such as sonnets, explore this concept of love in a much more idealistic way. William Shakespeare is well known for his romantic poetry that delves into love using an excess of figurative language. Sonnet 116 and Sonnet 130, while drastically different in tone, both convey love as unchanging, genuine, and a feeling worth pursuing.

The Sonnet 18 “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day “ is around the most admired and prominent of the 154 poems of William Shakespeare . Most researchers concur that the true recipient of the lyric, the mate of pleasant toward oneself, whom the artist is composing, is a man, however the sonnet is generally used to portray a lady. In the piece, the pleasant toward oneself contrasts his adoration with a June through August, and contends that his affection is superior to summer (Kennedy & Gioia). He additionally states that your beau will live everlastingly through the expressions of the lyric. Researchers have discovered parallels between this poem and sonnets Tristia and Amores of Ovid . A few interpretations have uncovered

This poem is known as sonnet 18. Sonnet 18 is the best known and most well-loved of all 154 sonnets that he made. Its title is Shall I compare thee to a summers day. The theme is that Shakespeare is admiring a woman, He Started his poem with question. In this question he proceeded to compare his beloved to a summer's day. He continues comparing the details of the summer day to his subject showing how she is much fairer. He ends the poem by focusing on the subject, her beauty. His tone is endearing, evoking affection from his beloved and the reader. There are multiple metaphors in the sonnet .This metaphor goes throughout the whole poem. For example, the first metaphor appears in line one. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?. Other metaphor appear in line 6,The sun is being compared to a face having a gold complexion. We have also metaphors in line 4 and 11.9 Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 is a classic sonnet which has 14 lines and is written in iambic pentameter. There is no variation from the meter. All of the lines are their own lines and are end-stopped. There are three quatrains in the poem where the first two are quite similar and in the third the tone(THEME) of the poem changes, which is then followed by a rhyming couplet. Rhyming couplet presents a summarizing or concluding statement on this theme. The reason beyond my choice for this poem is that the poem carries a happy tone. The speaker of the poem is trying to compare his lover to a summer's day which is a nice day. The sonnet is unique in its use of imagery and treatment of themes. And that what made the Shakespearian verse

The primary theme of Sonnet 130 is the comparison between Shakespeare’s real love to the clichéd love of other poets of that time, and also appearances. Other poems of this time period used hyperbole and would transform the woman that caught their affections as the most beautiful women to walk the Earth like they were goddesses. Shakespeare satirizes the conventional description of women in poetry at that time. He says that his lover has dark, wiry hair, bad breath, pale lips and a heavy step, when a typical sonnet would describe his love as a woman with beautiful hair, snow-white skin, red lips. She would have a voice more beautiful than music and walk like she floats on air. When Shakespeare does this, he tells his readers that he loves the real her, not an idealized version. Shakespeare also satirizes humankind’s obsession with beauty, and that it is ridiculous to ask anyone to try and live up to unattainable

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

Overall, both of these poems fulfill the same motive. They were written to praise women, but the two use different methods for doing so. In “Sonnet 18”, Shakespeare compares his lover with the negative aspects of summer stating “/Thou art more lovely and more temperate/” (2). On the other hand in “Sonnet 130”, Shakespeare compares his mistress to the good qualities of acquisitive things to show how even though she is not perfect, she is still important to him. He vows “by heaven” (13) that the feelings he has for his mistress are as rare “/As any she belied with false compare/” (14). The messages delivered by the two poems are very unique. In “Sonnet 18”, the woman being described is perfect and does

Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18” is, on the surface, another one of Shakespeare’s poems that praises the endless and otherworldly beauty of a nameless woman, lamenting that Death will eventually take it, as he takes everything. However, there is more to this sonnet than it seems. While the aforementioned description is true, the rhyming couplet coupled with Shakespeare’s trademark mastery of language and wordplay create a completely different reading experience. It is its own self-fulfilling prophecy, as the promise to immortalize the sonnet’s subject’s beauty is upheld by the mere existence and continued readings of the poem.

Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare is undoubtedly one of the most influential pieces of poetry in the history of humankind. It is a standard 14-line Shakespearian sonnet that describes the beauty of a woman in comparison the beauties of the world the speaker admires the most. Unlike Petrarch whose sonnets about the beauty of Beatrice were all aimed at picturing the godlike appearance and the personal traits of his beloved woman, sonnet 130 by Shakespeare goes in the opposite direction. This particular sonnet is unusual and, in a certain regard, revolutionary for the late-renaissance poetry as it steps back from the image of the woman as a goddess, a heavenly angel who delights the world with her presence. Sonnet 130 describes a woman as she really is, a woman with flaws, a woman who is not the most beautiful one in existence, a woman who might not be compared to the most admirable wonders of the world yet a woman whom the speaker loves dearly and considers the most important woman in his life.