Compare William Shakespeare's sonnets 12 and 73

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Sonnet 12


Compare William Shakespeare’s sonnets 12 and 73, look closely at the language use to convey the writer’s realisation of death

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) wrote a group of 154 sonnets between 1592 and 1597, which were compiled and published under the title ‘Shakespeare’s Sonnets’ in 1609. The 154 poems are divided into two groups, a larger set, consisting of sonnets 1-126 which are addressed by the poet to a dear young man, the smaller group of sonnets 127-154 address another persona, a ‘dark lady’. The larger set of sonnets display a deliberate sequence, a sonnet cycle akin to that used a decade earlier by the English poet Phillip Sidney (1554-1586) in ‘Astrophel and Stella’. The themes of love and infidelity are dominant in both sets of poems, in the larger grouping; these themes are interwoven with symbols of beauty, immortality, and the ravages of time. Lyrical speculations of poetry’s power to maintain bonds of love and to revere the beloved can also be found in the larger collection of sonnets.

Due to the great amount of Shakespeare’s work and its consistent quality, his particular style became known as ‘the Shakespearean sonnet form’. A typical Shakespearean sonnet has fourteen lines, broken down into three quatrains and ending with a rhyming couplet. In each quatrain a different subject will be conversed and described, the subject is then changed at the start of each new quatrain. The quatrain allows the theme of the sonnet to be developed. The ending couplet allows what was discussed in the forerunning quatrains to be resolved. A Shakespearean sonnet has the rhyming pattern ABABCDCDEFEFGG.

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Sonnet 12 talks about how time changes the body’s image, it also sees the writer thinking about death quite bluntly. He only seems to see that life is short and one life must make way for another. He does not see his value as a human being. Sonnet 73 shows the writer’s realisation that death is inevitable and cannot be avoided. He accepts this, and sees that his love will last forever even though he may not be there to experience it.

Sonnet 12, unlike sonnet 73, is made up of an octave, for observation, and a sestet, ...

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