How Does Shakespeare Form To Explore Ideas About Love And Mortality

‘Analyze How Poets Have Used the Sonnet Form to Explore Ideas About Love and Mortality’
Sonnets have been used to paint a detailed picture of human emotion, tradition and culture, through the centuries. Originally, they began in the 14th century and each era inherited the collections of fourteen lined literary genius and reworked its form, subject or use of sensual imagery in order to allow the literature to represent the moods of the time. The word “sonnet” comes from the Italian word, ‘sonnetto’, meaning “little song” or little sound”. Sonnets are written in iambic pentameter, which is the term describing a particular rhythm that the verse adopts; however, there have been sonnets such as, Sir Phillip Sidney’s ‘Astrophel’ and ‘Stella’, which
He uses the second quatrain to emphasis how the love is permanently upon each lover and it can never be shaken. In addition to this, in the second quatrain he also emphasises how love’s worth is not known, that however much we try and measure it we will never fully understand it and the power it has over people. The third quatrain then goes on to emphasise just how love is permanent once found, unshakeable throughout time so having the power to remain until the lovers are separated by death. As with all Shakespeare’s sonnets he uses the last couplet in order to summarise the theme he is trying to put across in the poem or to add a fresh new look to the theme. In the case of this sonnet, he adds the idea that if he is wrong and this error can in fact be proved, he would consider he has never written anything of consequence and no man has ever loved in the right sense. This summarises all ideas about how love is not insignificant because otherwise Shakespeare would have never written about anything of note. However, it also shows us another viewpoint on his work, because by saying, “if this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved,” he is
In the octave he presents the issue of how the love has died and how he wishes to “kiss and part” but the overall idea is that he is kidding himself. No couple who once truly loved each other could “shake hands forever” because it would mean they did not love each other at anytime in their relationship. This emphasises the overall idea that Drayton is kidding himself in the octave of the sonnet. Unlike Shakespeare, Michael Drayton uses the idea of the sestet to introduce an unexpected turn in the path of the sonnet’s theme, instead of the last two lines, which Shakespeare uses. The twist is the realisation of love. He creates the image of when a priest (faith) kneels by his bed at death, meaning he is about to die. He creates the illusion to the reader that he is about to die but in the last two lines he adds that his beloved can bring him from death to life and that a word from her would be enough to soften all the nasty words he has spoken and create a reconciliation between them. The sestet creates the idea of reversing all that has been said so that the solution of reconciliation is