Write a comparative analysis of 'Shall I compare thee...' by William Shakespeare and 'The Flea' by John Donne from the Best Words anthology.

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Write a comparative analysis of ‘Shall I compare thee…’ by William Shakespeare and ‘The Flea’ by John Donne from the Best Words anthology.

‘Shall I compare thee…’ by Shakespeare focuses on romantic love, whereas Donne’s poem, ‘The Flea’ is all about seduction and sexual love.

        The situations in the two poems are very different. In ‘Shall I compare thee…’, the poet is shown as a lover who is addressing his lady. His tone is gentle and romantic. He starts with a rhetorical question to which he must answer and therefore he does not put demand upon the lady. The poem gives the impression that it is set perhaps in his room, where he is composing his poem. One thing is for sure and that is that the woman he is addressing is not with him, because all the way through the poem, there is no response from her. Shakespeare wants to emphasize her beauty.

        In ‘The Flea’ the poet is directly appealing to the woman or his mistress. They seem to be in bed together with a flea, but no sex seems to have taken place. If it had, then the situation would be very different. The poet has seduced her as far as the bedroom and at this point, it seems as though he is going to try a new strategy. The woman does not appear to be very keen and is resisting his advances.

        Compared with Donne’s poem, in ‘Shall I compare thee…’ the poet is simply flattering the woman and wants her to like him. It is also one-sided, unlike in ‘The Flea’ where the woman gives her views as well. ‘Shall I compare thee…’ is similar to ‘First Love’ by John Clare in this way. In ‘First Love’, only the poet’s views are shown and therefore it is also one-sided. In ‘The Flea’ the poet’s aim is to have sex with the woman, but in ‘Shall I compare thee…’ there is no seduction or hidden agenda.

        The poets also argue their cases differently. Both poets use a three part argument although Shakespeare’s is in the form of a sonnet whilst Donne’s is a three stanza poem. Shakespeare’s poem is a sonnet and consists of three quatrains and a rhyming couplet. The first two quatrains start with the rhetorical question ‘Shall I compare thee…’ and the rest of this section answers this question. However, this question has an obvious answer of ‘no’ because the next line says,

“Thou art more temperate and beautiful”.

The poet thinks she is perfect, unlike a summer’s day. He says that the summer’s day is “sometime to hot” and has “rough windes”, but she is “more lovely”. He uses personification in the line,

 “And often is his gold complexion dim’d”.

He uses this technique to show that the sun has a face, which glows, but not always and therefore shows that summer is not perfect, but she is. He describes her as being “temperate” which means that she is moderate compared to the temperamental weather of an English summer. This is one of the things he says to compliment her.

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        The third quatrane starts with the word “but”, which signals a change to a different thought. In this quatrane, Shakespeare uses exaggerated claims to show how perfect she is. He says,

“Thy eternal Sommer shall not fade, nor lose possession of that faire thou ow’st”.

Here, he is explaining how much better than a summer’s day she is. He says that she will not lose her beauty due to ageing unlike summer, which turns into autumn after a while. He also personifies death to say,

“Nor shall death brag thou wandr’st in his shade”.

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