Throughout the Elizabethan Era William Shakespeare composed numerous poems, sonnets, and plays. Shakespeare is credited for writing one hundred and fifty-four sonnets. Theses sonnets that he compiled had multiple themes; consisting of love, procreation, greed, selfishness, and even death. During his allotted time as an author he wrote two sonnets titled “Sonnet XXII” and “Sonnet XXIII”.
Furthermore, Shakespeare gave his work “Sonnet XXII” a motif of love. In “Sonnet XXII” there are two characters. The first character is a young man, “For all that beauty… cover thee” (Shakespeare, l. 5). The second character is an old man. However, the old man doesn’t look beautiful “The seemly raiment of my heart, / Which in thy breast doth live, as thine
“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.
During the Medieval Times Culture was a significant part of everyday life. Compared to today there are some differences, yet there are some similarities. The case for women was disparate from what women are seen as today, and corresponding to men as well. Furthermore, the ideology of “Love” was big during the medieval times, accompanied by chivalry. First and foremost, the case for women was not what it was today.
For centuries scholars have been examining the question whether William Shakespeare wrote all the work that has been credited to him. In his short 52 years of life, he is said to have authored 154 sonnets, two epic poems, and 38 five-act plays. Following the death of Shakespeare, many scholars began researching information that may have proven why Shakespeare could not have been the primary author or the author at all for many of these works. Four theories as to why Shakespeare could not have written all the work that has been credited to him include: his limited education as an individual of common birth; the shear difficulty and near impossibility for one individual to write so many varied pieces, not
William Shakespeare was born on 23rd April 1564 (Honan, 1998). He was an English playwright and poet. People of his era and others after it regarded him as the greatest English writer and dramatist. According to Dobson (1992), he is often referred to as the national poet of England. His work is extensive and includes more than 38 plays, narrative poems and over 150 sonnets. Most of the early works that he produced were mainly histories and comedies which he perfected and made more sophisticated. Shakespeare’s sonnets had three underlying themes. These were beauty’s transience, life’s brevity and desire’s trapping (Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, n. d).
Knights in armor, damsels in distress, heroic quests, masquerade balls—this was the essence of romance in the Middle Ages. In medieval European literature, love is for the nobility, chivalrous, and virtuous. Andreas Capellanus defined courtly love as “Love is a certain inborn suffering derived from the sight of and excessive meditation upon the beauty of the opposite sex, which causes each one to wish above all things the embraces of the other and by a common desire to carry out all of love’s precepts in the other’s embraces.” Capellanus 28) In other words love and suffering go hand-in-hand, much like modern love. Capellanus gives the “Rules of Love” (1) governing how men and women should behave in relationships.
William Shakespeare wrote at least 37 plays and over 150 sonnets. It is believed that the sonnets were a part of his private diary that was never meant to be publicized. It is not confirmed but many believe that his sonnets portray his heart. This led us to venture as to what Shakespeare's views were on religion, sex, marriage, and life. For the last part of his writing career, Shakespeare focused on tragedies. In this time he wrote the works called “Hamlet” and “Macbeth”. There are seven years of his life after the birth of his twins in where no records exist. Scholars call
The Middle Ages is the time of discovery of courtly love and it became a very dominant period in arts, philosophy, and even religion. As illustrated by the many stories in existence about the Middle Ages, love was a target that one could successfully obtain. The woman was seen as something that could be owned and possessed by a man (Muir, 72). If a man was to profess attraction to a woman, the woman was expected to drop everything and take the man to bed immediately. In the case of married couples, some secrets would destroy a marriage. Many stories of this period revolve around actions of revenge resulting from forbidden affairs or betrayal. Today, the concept of love has changed and it is described like a fairy tale. The man has to get a girl after the completion of an almost impossible task (Glendinning 101). Some aspects in the middle ages have continue into the present time although with a bit of modification. For instance, one individual in the relationship is expected to rule over the home while the other, often the woman is expected to keep the room tidy and meet the needs of the other and obeying every command (Herlihy 112). This is wrong as both individuals should provide the necessary effort in making the relationship work and this can only be possible with compromise.
During the Shakespearean period love was presented in several different ways. Love was sometimes portrayed as a war between two lovers and sometimes used to profess admiration to a lover. In Sonnet 130, Shakespeare redefined what love poems were, by making his poem a parody of the conventional love poems that were written by poets in the sixteenth to seventeenth century. Prior to this poem, love poems were praised for their romantic appeals where more often than not they praised women for their beauty and god like appearance. This poem was known to be one of Shakespeare’s most famous sonnets because of its central idea that love is not only physical attraction. In the typical love poems women were described to have flawless skin, rosy cheeks and were admired by everyone in their society, while this poem particularly has a different tone to it. It mocks the typical love poems by stating his honest feelings towards his lover.
William Shakespeare has wrote many plays, stories, and poems in his lifetime. William Shakespeare lived for 52 years, and in his lifetime he wrote 38 plays, his series on Sonnet poems, and 5 other poems. He is the most popularly read author right behind the Bible. The sonnets he wrote were always 14 lines, and they all have the same amount of syllables. So, if you wanted, you can actually sing every single sonnet to a melody. The two sonnets I chose have to do with expressing your own beauty and passing the beauty on.
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.
“To be or not to be….” For most it leaves no question as to who wrote these infamous words. William Shakespeare is regarded by some as the greatest author within all of the English language. Regardless of one’s true opinion of Shakespeare’s writings, they continue to cycle their way from one generation to the next. His works still hold significant value within all levels of academic teachings. Shakespeare’s literatures range from poems and plays to sonnets. Once he gathered the notion of how the style of blank verse operated, he began to cultivate it into something unique and one he could call his very own. His latest works was that of sonnets, in which were found to be the last of his non-dramatic works to be
Ultimately, Shakespeare expresses his own feelings and opinions through the sonnet. His usage of language techniques helps him do so. Love is shown to be not only a quality, but it is personified as a perfect, unchanging thing, unaffected by time. Shakespeare has really proved himself to be a prolific writer and extraordinarily capable poet as result of this
During the Middle Ages, numerous forms of lyrics arose, which recreated the way that poetry was looked at for centuries afterward. The poetry that will be discussed was written by the troubadours, a southern French romance language, and the minnesingers, which were German singers of love songs. The troubadours are known for being “the first secular poets to rhyme their songs and put them to music,” as well as the first to redefine the idea of love (Medieval 1, pg. 2). Guillem IX, named “the First Troubadour,” went on to create many different poems, addressing themes of love and even satirizing the different conventional demands of courtly love during that time (Medieval 1, pg. 5). His poems, being among the first available that addressed courtly
The play’s central conflict is about seeking connection in a marriage. Although sexual frustrations can be treated by the vibrator that became available after the discovery of electricity, the need for psychological intimacy cannot be fixed by technological advancements. The first part of the play shows the physical needs of the female body and their solutions. The main plot is about two upper-class women discovering their sexual needs and finding treatment from the vibrator despite the ignorance of their husbands to female sexuality. A secondary plot is about the problem with breast feeding. Mrs. Givings’ body cannot produce enough milk for her baby, so she finds Elizabeth to attend her child. In the second part of the play, it becomes more evident that the problems are caused by inadequate communications in a marriage. The dilemmas of both women are caused by their husbands’ ignorance to feminine desires. Mrs. Daldry’s husband becomes more and more disinterested in her and keeps neglecting her. At the end, she stops her treatment when she realizes that the physical treatments are futile with her desire to feel an emotional connection with someone. After leaving the baby for Elizabeth, Mrs. Givings experiences emotional distress. She feels deprived of the right of a mother and feels more and more disconnected with her child. Mr. Givings disapproves of her desire to feed her own baby, because he is ignorant to how breast feeding can build a psychological connection
Some of the most renowned sonneteers express their love for another person in terms of the magnitude of that person’s beauty, especially during the Elizabethan era. But, the most powerful form of love is loving someone for who they are instead of what they look like. Loving someone for love’s sake allows love to last a lifetime because love is true and the truth does not change. This differs from loving someone for physical features in which both the love of looks and the beauty fade with time. While in the moment it may be charming to be characterized by eternal beauty, as William Shakespeare does in Sonnet 18, being loved for the real feeling of being loved is more lovely where true love does not fade like the love for physical features. The truth of true love is evident in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 14 where she insinuates that the failure to love someone for only love’s sake reveals the love as being superficial. True love should be something that is not only contained in human nature or characteristics but should be something beyond humanity that is eternal. Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 14 dismisses the love of physical features that William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 prides on in order to illustrate that true love is unearthly, unchanging, and eternal.