Shakespeare’s Sonnets
What is a sonnet ? Sonnets are little poems that are generally composed by fourteen lines and are written in iambic pentameter, that is a metrical line use a lot in traditional English poetry.
What are the features of a sonnet ? Sonnets have 14 lines. The type of rhyme that sonnets have is abab cdcd efef gg. Sonnets are written in iambic pentameter
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Analysis
Sonnet LVII Being your slave, what should I do but tend Upon the hours and times of your desire? I have no precious time at all to spend, Nor services to do, till you require. Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you, Nor think the bitterness of absence sour When you have bid your servant once adieu; Nor dare I question with my jealous thought Where you may be, or your affairs suppose, But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought Save, where you are how happy you make those. So true a fool is love that in your will, Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.
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Analysis This sonnet talks about a guy (in this case Shakespeare) that it’s in love with a girl, he depends of her love a lot but she is very demanding so he is always questioning what she does and doing everything that she wants, because even if she does something to him, he is a slave of the love she feels for her. One of the phrases that called my attention is the one that says “So true a full is love, that in you will, though you do anything, he thinks no ill” because for me the meaning of this quote is that sometimes love is very innocent and makes you such a fool, that you stop caring about yourself and you only care about the other person, and at the end doing that only hurts you.
Sonnet XII So is it not with me as with that Muse, Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse, Who heaven itself for ornament doth use And every fair with his fair doth rehearse, Making a couplement of proud compare With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems, With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare, That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems. O! let me, true in love, but truly write, And then believe me, my love is as fair As any mother's child, though not so bright As those gold candles fixed in heaven's air: Let them say more that like of hearsay well; I will not praise that purpose not to sell
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Analysis
The sonnet talks about how the writer doesn't want to compare her love to something unrealistic and perfect like the sun, the moon or first born flowers, instead he wants to talk about his lover in a realistic and honest way, because nobody's perfect even if it’s you favorite person. He also doesn't want to write about a perfect love or lover only to sell books because in that time all the love poems were about perfection and unrealistic images of people, that’s why it says “I will not praise that purpose not to sell”. I think that even though Shakespeare was sometimes a little bit ruff, in his stories love it’s seen as something real not something perfect and that’s ok because love doesn’t have to be perfect to be good.