How is the theme of love variously treated in the four poems "Shall I Compare Thee, To His Coy Mistress, Porphryia's Lover and My Last Duchess"?

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Natasha Williams

How is the theme of love variously treated in the four poems “Shall I Compare Thee, To His Coy Mistress, Porphryia’s Lover and My Last Duchess”?

A love poem must have many different qualities to it. The poem will always have a theme that is something about love, the celebration of love, a first love or the hardships of love. The poet is generally describing his feelings so the tone of the poem will relate to the poets emotions at the time so it could be sweet and joyful or bitter and resentful. Some poems are written to persuade and express the poet’s feelings in a more romantic way. Imagery is very important in love poetry as it allows the reader to picture what the poet was thinking or feeling when he wrote it. This can be achieved by describing the atmosphere, hearts, roses and by describing how a person looks. Language can also help the reader imagine the poet’s thoughts. Similes, metaphors and alliteration can bring to life an object or person and assonance can be used to show the poets emotions. The purpose of a love poem is so the poet can express themselves emotionally to express love, to share love or to remember a past love. A poem can be expressed in a number of forms, it could be sang, serenaded or just written down as a sonnet or rhyme. In the history of love poetry there are many great poets such as John Keats, Robert Browning and William Shakespeare. Many different modern love poets often reflects on their writing, especially Shakespeare, as it is wide read.

Each of the four poems, “Shall I compare thee?”,  “My Last Duchess”, “To His Coy Mistress” and “Porphryia’s Lover” has a very different portrayal of love. In Shakespeare’s “Shall I compare thee?” the speaker compares the girl to an ‘eternal sommer’ which is very flattering but in “Porphryia’s Lover” the speaker is telling how he murdered his mistress for the sake of their love. They all describe a loved person in various ways and in each poem the speaker has preserved them forever in a different way.

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“Shall I compare thee?” is a traditional love poem written by Shakespeare. The poem is also known as Sonnet XVIII and is just one of the one hundred and fifty sonnets known to have been written by Shakespeare. “Shall I compare thee?” has a similar theme to many of Shakespeare’s sonnets, which include ideas about the cruelty of time and how his words can defeat time by lasting far longer then the person who inspired him. The speaker of the poem is describing his loved one and he says that she is ‘more lovely and more temperate’ then a ...

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