The poet and playwright synonymous with poetry and romance, William Shakespeare “often portray[ed] with some approval an idealism that is not too saintly to compromise itself,” as Klause describes in his article (Klause 310). In his sonnets, Shakespeare, or the narrator in the sonnets, wrote of a partner that he loved, his beloved. More specifically, in sonnet 130, Shakespeare described how his partner, his mistress, is perfect in every way for him. With every description of how his mistress’s eyes “are nothing like the sun,” to make them seem as if they were not as bright, actually portrays both the mistress and the partner (the narrator) an as ideal. The narrator is seen as an ideal for praising their mistress in such a high regard that can be seen through the couplet, the final two lines of the sonnet, as his love described “rare” and the other woman he compared his mistress to were all of “false compare” because his mistress is perfect in his eyes (Damrosch 1088). In the same way, the mistress is seen as more ideal when compared to conventional ‘ideal woman’ that the narrator refers to throughout the sonnet. It is when she is compared to these other standards of beauty that the narrator emphasizes not only the mistress’s uniqueness in terms of beauty. She is a woman with lips not as red as any other woman and dull eyes however she remains loved by the…
they become more evident. In both sonnets the Shakespeare does not mention said love until the…
Compare the ways in which attitudes to love are explored by Shakespeare in Sonnet 116, and Marvell in To His Coy Mistress…
The art of seduction has been accomplished in numerous ways throughout history and has always remained dependent on the assumed appeal of the person being seduced. In Shakespeare's “Sonnet 130”, the genre of Carpe Diem was exemplified with a largely satirical approach. In doing so, the speaker tried to appeal to his mistress by appealing to ethos with Aristotle's first version of ethos, appeal of your own good character, more specifically, will-power or arete, as well as Aristotle's second version of ethos, appealing to the character of one's audience.…
Shakespeare, being one of the most well known writers of love sonnets, incorporates a love sonnet into the play. The use of a love sonnet highlights the devotion Romeo and Juliet show towards one-another; “...My lips, two blushing pilgrims ready stand...” and is important for communicating the reader the feelings passing between the two. Their language is intertwined into this romantic love poem and the reader is able to better understand the extent of their feelings as well as the urge for them to touch one another “...let lips do what hands do...” In this line Romeo is…
The views of female characters from the man’s perspective have significantly changed from the pre-classical era to the classical literature era. From then women went from being described as animalistic, to symbols of holiness, then to more physically attributed beings. Which led to Shakespeare, who would describe women as being at the same level as men. How men have seen and wrote about women was, and is still, on a constant rollercoaster of stature.…
Both Cymbeline and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (AMND) are both set in a patriarchal environment where both genders grapple for control. Valerie Traub defines the distinction between gender sex and gender behavior as “Sex refers to the . . . biological distinctions between male and female bodies. Gender refers to those meanings derived from the division of male and female . . . the attributes considered appropriate to each: ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine.’” (Valerie Traub, “Gender and Sexuality in Shakespeare” p129) Patriarchy indirectly opposes this source of the meaning with male leaders moderating their control with their own male qualities. However, this thinking needed a stern control over the attribution of suitable behavior for each sex, signifying that gendered meanings “exist primarily as constructions of particular societies.” (Valerie Traub, “Gender and Sexuality in Shakespeare” p129)One display of this control contained in both plays is the orderly arrangement of female sexuality, a classification distinguished from the sexual characteristics of connecting explicitly to “erotic desires and activities.” (Valerie Traub, “Gender and Sexuality in Shakespeare” p129) Margreta de Grazia claimed “nothing threatens a patriarchal and hierarchic social formation more than a promiscuous womb,” (Margreta de Grazia, “The Scandal of Shakespeare’s Sonnets,” in Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Critical Essays,p106) and pivotally, both plays examine the supposed risk of unrestrained female desire. Also, the sexual relationships existing in the Sonnets appear to subvert stereotypical gender ideas founded in the initial poems. A view held in Cymbeline by both Posthumous and the king was that the appealing neutrality of the speaker's master-mistress questions the…
.......In Sonnets 127 through 154, Shakespeare devotes most of his attention to addressing a mysterious "dark lady"–a sensuous, irresistible woman of questionable morals who captivates the poet. References to the dark lady also appear in previous sonnets (35, 40, 41, 42), in which Shakespeare reproaches the young man for an apparent liaison with the dark lady. The first two lines of Sonnet 41 chide the young man for "those petty wrongs that liberty commits / when I am sometime absent from thy heart," a reference to the young man 's wrongful wooing of the dark lady. The last two lines, the rhyming couplet, further impugn the young man for using his good looks to attract…
Sonnets were usually used for love poetry, although this sonnet is used as a prologue. A prologue is very strange thing that Shakespeare has done. He has not done this on any other play that he has written. There are many reasons for this. One probably being to make sure that everyone in the audience knows what is going to happen. This leads me to the second point. Destiny. Many people in the audience believed that their lives were destined and written in stone. He wanted to show how God sees the world with the paths he has created. And there is no control over what can happen as we are only viewers of our own lives. "A pair of star crossed lovers take their life" shows that Romeo and Juliet were made to fall in love. It was in the stars. But that same love would be…
Many of Shakespeare’s plays revolve around the common source of love and hatred. In “Othello” and “Much Ado about Nothing” there is an obvious love story between Othello and Desdemona and Claudio and Hero. In both plays, women have put shame on their families. Desdemona betrays her father by marrying a Moor and Hero was accused of cheating on her wedding day. In “Othello” women are degraded and are looked down upon, as inferior. Iago has the mind-set that women are only good for one thing, having the pleasure to pleasure men.…
Shakespeare’s sonnet, My Mistress’ Eyes, explores the common and oft-heard comparisons created concerning one’s love to the material objects of beauty, and considers the value within such correlations. As the essay explores these associations, it ultimately comes to the conclusion that such comparisons can not properly depict the love that is present towards a close other.…
A majority of Shakespeare’s plays include significant presence of female characters that reveal his views regarding woman’s role during the time period. Generally, women during the Shakespearean time period were obligated to suppress their opinions and were stripped from rights that women in the twenty-first century possess. They were expected to manage the household, as opposed to men, who were expected to be the decision makers. Additionally, the qualities of an ideal woman were mainly her virtue, beauty and youth. With that said, many of the female characters in Shakespeare’s plays oppose the societal norms of that time period in some form or another. For example in Twelfth Night, we observe opposition to these cultural assumptions in an…
In sonnet one hundred and twenty nine by William Shakespeare, the speaker uses powerful imagery and a dark, ominous tone to convey how lust can seem wonderful at the time, but can eventually hurt a person emotionally and lead them to a the point of no return. In the first quatrain of the sonnet, the speaker states that “lust is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust.” (3-4) This powerful imagery from this quotation depicts what the speaker believes lusting after someone is like, based off of their experiences. Words like “perjured, murderous, and bloody” produce gruesome images that portray the dark, savage side of love and lust.…
The sonnet has many themes that relate to the main reason the sonnet was written. Beauty is inferred to in the poem as the speakers love is compared to the summer which is also beautiful. The speaker says his the person he loves is everlastingly beautiful and how beauty fades away but the his loves beauty is always constant. The speaker starts to illustrate a picture in the readers mind that the love is a perfect being. This is another way he increases his glorification by showing how he can immortalize a great person in his writing. Another theme of this sonnet is immortality. "Shakespeare advocates seeking immortality through poetry rather than through procreation"(Sonnet 18). In the previous 17 sonnets the speaker is more focused on getting his love immortalized by procreation. In sonnet 18 his vision changes and he is more focused on immortalization by poetry.…
Traub, Valerie. “Gender and sexuality in Shakespeare.” The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare. Ed. Margreta De Grazia and Stanley Wells. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 2001.129-46. Print.…