Comparing The Voice In Porphyria's Lover And My Last Duchess
How do different poets use the voice of the speaker in their poems to reveal their ideas and engage their readers?
The speaker’s role in a poet’s expression and engagement of readers is essential. It influences a story’s direction, the emotions invoked in the reader, and how themes are shaped into ideas.
Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues Porphyria’s Lover and My Last Duchess contain many thematic similarities, despite portraying different scenarios, primarily spoken through a possessive and jealous man. In Porphyria’s Lover a man waits in his cottage for Porphyria. Her arrival “shut[s] the cold out and the storm” both literally and metaphorically. Porphyria confesses her undying love for the speaker, who, “happy and proud”, that Porphyria …show more content…
Shakespeare’s soliloquy To Be, or Not to Be displays Hamlet’s inner thoughts, as he contemplates suicide. Keats predicted he would die young from tuberculosis, like his brother, and never experience his greatest desires- fame and “high romance”. In the end, Keats reconciled with his fear of death, and accepted his predicament “till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.” Hamlet’s monologue reveals his troubled mind, torn between revenge and morality. The uncertainty over what action to take drives Hamlet insane, and he debates with himself whether “to be, or not to be”. Hamlet describes life as a “sea of troubles”, filled with “heartache, and [a] thousand natural shocks”, making it sound miserable and worthless. He contrasts by comparing death to relieving sleep, but “to sleep – perchance to dream”, is the true reason for choosing life – “for in that sleep of death what dreams may come/…/ must give us pause.” Hamlet concludes that the key factor keeping humans from choosing death is fear of the unknown – “thus conscience does make cowards of us all”, and in this conclusion decides upon the cowardly option to live. While Keats’ sonnet expresses his own fear of death, and his inner desires, Hamlet is mentally unstable and debating whether life’s hardships or death’s mysteries are a more daunting …show more content…
In Sonnet 116, Shakespeare’s tone is idealistic, maintaining that true love “is an ever-fixed mark” and never changes or “alters when it alteration finds”. He confidently states that true love lasts forever, and “alters not with his brief hours and weeks”. Shakespeare’s conviction that love “looks on tempests and is never shaken” reveals a naïveté seldom found in Shakespeare. His firm declaration in the final couplet that “if this be error and upon me proved,/ I never writ, nor no man ever loved”, further emphasises his certainty. In Sonnet 2, the speaker’s tone is more cynical. Rather than romanticising love and beauty, Shakespeare expresses disdain for the cliché of beauty lasting forever, within “thine own deep-sunken eyes”. Sonnet 2 is addressed to a young man, presumably Shakespeare’s lover. Shakespeare condescendingly states that once “forty winters … besiege thy brow,/ and dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,” his only worth may be found if he raises a child. The speaker scares his subject by reminding him of his own mortality. Both Sonnets address the topic of beauty fading as time progresses. In Sonnet 116, Shakespeare declares that “Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips an cheeks/ within his bending sickle’s compass come”, saying that even as death draws nearer and beauty fades, love
The speaker’s role in a poet’s expression and engagement of readers is essential. It influences a story’s direction, the emotions invoked in the reader, and how themes are shaped into ideas.
Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues Porphyria’s Lover and My Last Duchess contain many thematic similarities, despite portraying different scenarios, primarily spoken through a possessive and jealous man. In Porphyria’s Lover a man waits in his cottage for Porphyria. Her arrival “shut[s] the cold out and the storm” both literally and metaphorically. Porphyria confesses her undying love for the speaker, who, “happy and proud”, that Porphyria …show more content…
Shakespeare’s soliloquy To Be, or Not to Be displays Hamlet’s inner thoughts, as he contemplates suicide. Keats predicted he would die young from tuberculosis, like his brother, and never experience his greatest desires- fame and “high romance”. In the end, Keats reconciled with his fear of death, and accepted his predicament “till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.” Hamlet’s monologue reveals his troubled mind, torn between revenge and morality. The uncertainty over what action to take drives Hamlet insane, and he debates with himself whether “to be, or not to be”. Hamlet describes life as a “sea of troubles”, filled with “heartache, and [a] thousand natural shocks”, making it sound miserable and worthless. He contrasts by comparing death to relieving sleep, but “to sleep – perchance to dream”, is the true reason for choosing life – “for in that sleep of death what dreams may come/…/ must give us pause.” Hamlet concludes that the key factor keeping humans from choosing death is fear of the unknown – “thus conscience does make cowards of us all”, and in this conclusion decides upon the cowardly option to live. While Keats’ sonnet expresses his own fear of death, and his inner desires, Hamlet is mentally unstable and debating whether life’s hardships or death’s mysteries are a more daunting …show more content…
In Sonnet 116, Shakespeare’s tone is idealistic, maintaining that true love “is an ever-fixed mark” and never changes or “alters when it alteration finds”. He confidently states that true love lasts forever, and “alters not with his brief hours and weeks”. Shakespeare’s conviction that love “looks on tempests and is never shaken” reveals a naïveté seldom found in Shakespeare. His firm declaration in the final couplet that “if this be error and upon me proved,/ I never writ, nor no man ever loved”, further emphasises his certainty. In Sonnet 2, the speaker’s tone is more cynical. Rather than romanticising love and beauty, Shakespeare expresses disdain for the cliché of beauty lasting forever, within “thine own deep-sunken eyes”. Sonnet 2 is addressed to a young man, presumably Shakespeare’s lover. Shakespeare condescendingly states that once “forty winters … besiege thy brow,/ and dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,” his only worth may be found if he raises a child. The speaker scares his subject by reminding him of his own mortality. Both Sonnets address the topic of beauty fading as time progresses. In Sonnet 116, Shakespeare declares that “Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips an cheeks/ within his bending sickle’s compass come”, saying that even as death draws nearer and beauty fades, love