Analyse Shakespeares attitude to love

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Stacey Andrews

Write 600 words on Shakespeare’s attitude to love

Sonnet 18 presents an idealistic, romanticised view of love. The true essence of the poem serves to depict the poets’ love for the subject through an almost eternal/everlasting love, “but thy eternal summer shall not fade”, and even states, “as long as men can breathe…this gives life to thee”.

Focusing on the stability of love, the subject of the poem is presented to the reader as a somewhat, glorified, perfect human being in that firstly, he is compared to summer, “shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” and secondly, the subject is summer, “thy eternal summer shall not fade.”

Sonnet 130, on the other hand, presents a more realistic perception of love than the previous. Unusually, Shakespeare, goes against the usual traditional, romanticised, love poetry, to present the reader with a negative comparison that, pokes fun at the typical exaggerated love poetry.  “But no such roses see I in her cheeks.”

In conventional love poetry, we would expect the subject to be elevated and glorified, as in Sonnet 18; yet, this is not the case. The subject of the poem is compared in a negative manner as seen through the poets’ senses. He sees her eyes as “nothing like the sun”. He compares her smell to that of perfume “and in some perfumes is there more delight”, which shows that he is not overly excited by her. We would expect the ‘mistress’ to move as graceful as an angel, however here, Shakespeare suggests that the subject of the poem is ‘heavy footed’, as she “treads on the ground.”  Again, and throughout this sonnet, his ‘mistress’ is viewed in ‘realistic terms’ “I grant I never saw a goddess go”. 

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The indent, towards the end signifies a change in content, “And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare, As any she belied with false compare”. Here, Shakespeare, states that even though his mistress is all of these unflattering things, he still loves her for who she is. Rather than loving her for her physical appearance, he loves her for the true nature of her character. The first compliment, that we read can be seen nine lines into the sonnet, “I love to hear her speak” however, this is soon contradicted in the following line, when we read, “That ...

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