Preview

Nature in Shakespeare's Sonnets

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1733 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Nature in Shakespeare's Sonnets
Nature in Shakespeare’s Sonnets

In Shakespeare’s fair youth Sonnets, the speaker uses imagery and metaphors from nature to describe man’s life cycle. While reading the Sonnets, it may seem at first that the main point of the Sonnets is that life’s purpose is to reproduce. However, after reading the fair youth Sonnets, it becomes clear that imagery from nature is used to prove that death is inevitable and should be accepted. The fair youth Sonnets are ordered in a specific way to resemble the life cycle of a man. As the Sonnets progress the overall themes of the sonnets seems to change. This cycle starts off with ‘Sonnet 1’ and ‘Sonnet 3’ and concludes with ‘Sonnet 73’ and ‘Sonnet 74’. Sonnets 1, 3, 7, 15, 60, 73, and 74 are all used to show this life cycle and its progression through life. In ‘Sonnet 1’ and ‘Sonnet 3’ it is clear that the speaker is attempting to get the point across that reproduction is life’s only purpose. However, in ‘Sonnet 16’ – ‘Sonnet 73’ it is obvious that the theme changes drastically. No longer is reproduction the main point, but it changes to death and its inevitability. Throughout the Sonnets, nature is used as a comparison to help the speaker explain life in a way that helps the reader understand the true life cycle of man. It is understandable that death is inevitable for every living thing in nature. Reproduction is also required for every living thing to exist. In Sonnet 1 the speaker wants the reader to know that life is beautiful and reproduction is a result of that; “From fairest creatures we desire increase/That thereby beauty’s rose might never die/But as the riper should time decrease/His tender heir might bear his memory” (Sonnet 1 L. 1-3). The beauty of a rose is being compared to the beauty of man’s ability to reproduce and pass on the ‘fairest,’ or beautiful, genes. In nature a beautiful rose can stand out among the brush in a forest, or in a garden a rose can be the most beautiful flower, just the way that man’s

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    Sonnets are rhymed poems consisting of fourteen lines, it is divided into two different lines, the first eight lines making up the octet and the other last six lines being the sestet. The Shakespearean sonnet however differs from the Petrarchian sonnets and the Spenserian sonnet, it ends with a rhymed couplet and follows the rhyme scheme. Therefore, the octet and sestet structure can be unconventionally divided into three quatrains with alternating rhymes concluding in a rhymed couplet. Till present day, over more than one hundred fifty of Shakespeare's sonnets is still debated and very much well-known throughout English literature. Shakespeare's poetic genius' is very evident throughout many of his poems, it is his superior skill of using different elements of poetic technique that he make use of in trying to convey the message in his poems that makes his poetry not only significantly beautiful but also meaningful.…

    • 1464 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Sonnet 104

    • 572 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Sonnet 104 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English poet William Shakespeare. It's a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a fair friend. Each stanza expresses Shakespeare’s relationship with his beloved. The sonnet deals with the destructive forces of time as humans grow older and makes a commentary on the process of aging.…

    • 572 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “Sonnet 73,” William Shakespeare utilizes a somber mood, strong imagery, and intense metaphors, which construct a window into the soul of a dying old man for Shakespeare’s audience to visualize the dreadful oncoming of death and question the meaning of life. “Sonnet 73” is identical in structure to Shakespeare’s other sonnets with three quatrains and ending in a couplet. In the three quatrains Shakespeare compares the narrator to the transition from late fall to winter, the coming of darkness at the end of the day, and the dying of a flame. Shakespeare uses a different quatrain to elaborate each of these three metaphors that all envelop the poem’s theme of mortality leading to death. Though the poem has a theme surrounded by death the ending couplet gives a slight relief to the somber mood by conveying a message that relays appreciation for love and compassion.…

    • 751 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    .......Shakespeare addresses Sonnets 1 through 126 to an unidentified young man with outstanding physical and intellectual attributes. The first seventeen of these urge the young man to marry so that he can pass on his superior qualities to a child, thereby allowing future generations to enjoy and appreciate these qualities when the child becomes a man. In Sonnet 18, Shakespeare alters his viewpoint, saying his own poetry may be all that is necessary to immortalize the young man and his qualities.…

    • 552 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Over hundreds of years, it comes to no surprise that many scholars have found the sonnets effective in revealing insight into the biography of William Shakespeare. The emotional pressure contained in many of the sonnets and the fact that many, if not all, are dedicated to a man named ‘Mr. W.H.', provide important clues to Shakespeare's life. It begins with the sonnets' dedication, a passage written by Shakespeare that opens a world of controversy amongst scholars. The dedication runs as follows:…

    • 1258 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The first 126 sonnets are addressed to a young man and the last 26 to a woman. The sonnets were first published in 1609 quarto with full stylized title: SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS. Sonnets 138 and 144 had previously been published in the 1599 miscellany The Passionate Pilgrim. The quarto ends with “A Lover’s Complaint”, a narrative poem of 47 seven line stanzas written in rhyme royal though some scholars have argued convincingly against Shakespeare’s authorship of the poem. There were three main characters in his sonnets: The Fair Youth (1-126), The Darn Lady (127-154), and The Rival Poet (78-86). The sonnets are almost all constructed from three quatrains, which are four lined stanzas, and a final couplet composed in iambic pentameter. This is also the meter used extensively in Shakespeare's plays. The sonnets to the young man express overwhelming, obsessional love. The main issue of debate is has always been whether it remained platonic or became physical. The first 17 poems, traditionally called the procreation sonnets, are addressed to the young man and urging him to marry and have children in order to immortalized his beauty by passing it to the next generation. The sonnets include a dedication to one “Mr. W.H.”. The identity of this person remains a mystery and, since the 19th century, has provoked a great deal of…

    • 1705 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    W. H. is the only “begetter” of the sonnets. They were first published in quarto, this consisted of three divisions and a poem called “A Lover’s Complaint. It has “every appearance of having intentionally preserved the order in which the sonnets were written” with a few minor exceptions (Butler 8). “No second edition was called for” (Butler 9) and after this edition, the sonnets were not reprinted until 1640 when J. Benson published a work including most of sonnets but omitting 18, 19, 43, 56, 75, 76, 96, 126 and generally disarranging them. This was apparently an unintentional consequence due to his carelessness and lackadaisical attitude. In 1709, the sonnets were published with “the whole of Shakespeare’s poems” (Butler 11) in original order by Lintott. And so began the printing history of the sonnets. Many additional editions have been made and many analysis and commentary exist. As mentioned previously, the ambition of this paper is to show how in the sonnets Shakespeare describes beauty through contrast and aging. Several sonnets have been selected to emphasize his use of imagery and objects of nature as…

    • 3158 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Shakespeare Sonnet 2 Tone

    • 1152 Words
    • 5 Pages

    In Shakespeare’s Sonnet II, the sonnet progresses from a gentle warning, to a more stern threat by the end of the poem. In the first stanza, Shakespeare says that in forty years when the man is all wrinkled, the beauty of his youth will mean nothing. But if he has a child, then the legacy of his beauty will live on forever. In the second stanza, Shakespeare says that the man will hate himself if he does not have children, and when he gets old and decrepit he cannot see his beauty passed on to anyone. He will look back on his life, and realize how greedy and selfish he was by not having children. In the third…

    • 1152 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    For long centuries, two distinct, yet inextricably connected, mysteries have confounded the literary world. They are the actual identities of the “Fair Youth” and the “Dark Lady”, the chief protagonists, other than the poet/narrator, in William Shakespeare 's sonnets. As the sonnets reflect a painful and complex triangle existing between the poet, the young man, and the dark woman, it is inevitable that theories as to the identity of one are employed to isolate the other.…

    • 3638 Words
    • 15 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    On the other hand, the mood of “Sonnet 30” makes the reader feel depressed and at some point loveless. Also, another difference between the sonnets is the tone of each. In “Sonnet 18”, a” lovely” and “temperate” (Line 2) tone is emitted yet, the tone of “Sonnet 30” is cheerless and painful as expressed in “even as I speak, for lack of love alone.”, “Yet many a man is making friends with death”. Moreover, the different respective themes of the sonnets show a great difference between William Shakespeare’s and Edna St. Vincent Millay’s perception of love. The theme of “Sonnet 18” is “the ephemeral nature of beauty.” This theme is expressed in “But thy eternal summer […] to time thou grow'st” (Line 9-12). Conversely, the theme of “Sonnet 30”, is, the importance of love for human beings. This theme is uttered in the axiom, “Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink.” The message of “Sonnet 18” is that poetry immortalizes beauty, expressed in “But thy eternal summer shall not fade” (Line 9), while the message of “Sonnet 30” is love is not essential for human beings yet, people lack of it mentioned in “Yet many a man is making friends with death” (Line 7). Concluding, “Sonnet 18” by William Shakespeare is written in a classical style due to…

    • 579 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Just Macbeth Themes

    • 1092 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Even though Shakespeare’s sonnets were written over four-hundred years ago, they have stood the test of time and have remained popular because of the issues and ideas they raise are about humans and human nature, which are both unchanging over time. Sonnet 18, Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?, is the best known sonnet out of the 154 written by William Shakespeare. This particular piece of writing still remains just as, if not more popular today, than it did during Shakespeare’s time. This is due to the depth of emotion and romantic language used, which is constantly touching the hearts of…

    • 1092 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the first four lines of the sonnet, Shakespeare is explaining how life is always changing and also how the life of man is short, just as the wave of the seas makes it's way toward the shore. In lines number two and three of the sonnet, Shakespeare is telling the reader that life goes from generation to generation; not necessarily as exactly as the last life but similar. Just as man produce offspring to carry their name from generation to generation and like the waves, "each changing place with which goes before," their offspring look similar but not identical to the "master mold" from which they came from. In line four of the sonnet, Shakespeare slightly changes directions and tone to explain that life has its many hardships and that in life, there is always going to be some source of discomfort as shown "…sequent toil all forwards do contend." Toil refers to trouble or hardship and the phrase all forwards do contend refers to the future ahead for man. Then suddenly again, Shakespeare changes the mood again in sonnet line five through eight.…

    • 863 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    We, the reader, witness the final moments of this dying love, noting our author suffers the same fate many of us have when cast aside by a careless lover. “Readers persisting in regarding characters as more human than substantial hypothetical beings, more like friends or neighbors” give the sonnet a more powerful, emotional reading. (Keen, 2011, p. 295). We attest to the last gasp of their love as it dies.…

    • 1339 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Sonnet 18 Research Paper

    • 1156 Words
    • 3 Pages

    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.…

    • 1156 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Shakespeare Soneet 18

    • 468 Words
    • 2 Pages

    This is one of the most famous of all the sonnets, justifiably so. But it would be a mistake to take it entirely in isolation, for it links in with so many of the other sonnets through the themes of the descriptive power of verse; the ability of the poet to depict the fair youth adequately, or not; and the immortality conveyed through being hymned in these 'eternal lines'. It is noticeable that here the poet is full of confidence that his verse will live as long as there are people drawing breath upon the earth, whereas later he apologises for his poor wit and his humble lines which are inadequate to encompass all the youth's excellence. Now,…

    • 468 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays

Related Topics