All three of the sonnets however do have a use of iambic pentameter. Lets take the last line of each for example:
‘So long as men can breath or eyes can see’
‘If this can be error and upon me prov’d’
‘A little while that sings in me no more’
As you can see there is a strong use of iambic pentameter and onomatopoeia in all three sonnets. This is intentional as it gives a strong sense of rhythm to the piece and as aforementioned most sonnets were originally written in order to be a musical piece.
Again we notice a similarity between the pieces this time regarding the matter of them, they all deal with love. This is quite ordinary however for Shakespeare though as nearly all his literature dealt with the aspect of love in alternate surroundings. The only themes-based difference between the three is the context love is approached from. In ‘Shall I compare thee’ for example Shakespeare is dealing with a lover of his own However in ‘Let me not’ Shakespeare takes a much wider birth of the word love as here he examines the term love and who or what love actually is. In the Petrarchan one the angle again is different as here Millay is speaking of loves departure.
The first quatrain of ‘Shall I compare thee’ talks of Shakespeare’s lover. Here he makes comparisons between his lover and summers day. This is also done in Millay’s sonnet XI ii in the last lines where it is written ‘I only know that summer sang in me’. Love is often compared to the seasons and this thought is progressed when Millay writes that being without love is like being in winter (Line 9 sonnet XI ii).
Quatrains two and three of ‘Shall I compare thee’ remain again in the complimentary nature of one lover to another. This is achieved by the notion gathered from lines seven through nine that every beauty sometimes appears less so (due to age or illness) but his lovers beauty will never decline.
The third and perhaps most difficult sonnet ‘Let me not….’ Deals with what love actually is. The first quatrain of this pieces implication is that true love is unchangeable; even if flaws are found your feelings do not change (‘ Love is not love which bends when alteration finds’). It also describes true love to not disappear if your partner suddenly wants to depart on the relationship (‘ Or bends with the remover to remove’) . From this we can infer that what Shakespeare speaks of in the other two sonnets is in fact true love; ‘But thy eternal summer shall never fade’ (From ‘Shall I compare thee…’; even if you age to me you will be eternally beautiful) and in sonnet XI ii Millay talks of missing the person she loves i.e. still in love with them and did not bend with the remover to remove so to speak.
Lines seven and eight of ‘Let me not’ however are aspects of love in relation to humanity. Here it basically affirms that love is the goal to which all humanity is aiming for (‘ It is the star to every wandering barke’) and even though they are unable to grasp how significant it will be to them (‘whose worth’s unknown’) they take into account that it will be quite momentous to them (‘Although it height be taken’). The humanity and momentity of love is examined also in out Petrarchan sonnet as it talks of loves uncertainty and of the reality of lost love (‘I only know that summer sang in me a little while that singe in me no more’). Here Millay is showing that love can indeed feel like a ‘summer’ inside of you but because love is an indecisive emotion it can leave you feeling hollow ‘Sings in me no more’ and ‘in my heart there stirs a pain’. This adheres to ‘Let me not’…’s idea of love will be a momentous event as only something momentous could leave you feeling so lost. ‘Shall I compare thee’ cannot compare to these poems in this sense as it only speaks of the joy of having love.
The last quatrain of ‘Let me not’ professes that love is there forever and will never depart (‘Bears it out to the edge of doom’). Again this is mirrored in a sentence from ‘shall I compare thee’ this being ‘But thy eternal summer shall never fade. This does not comply with our third sonnet as Millay talks of a love lost. This leads us to believe that maybe the subject of Millays sonnet was not experiencing true love as this love is no longer around. However I think that maybe Millay was again just showing a more realistic view of love then the Shakespearean sonnets.
In conclusion after evaluating all three sonnets it is notable that all three sonnets can comply to each other on some theme based aspects but over all the Shakespearean sonnets had the most in common as they were both nearly identical on theme and form whereas the Petrarchan sonnet couldn’t compare on some aspects of theme and obviously on aspects of form.
