Study of sonnets

A detailed Summary of Study of sonnets


Shakespeare presents love and lust as two very different things. Although one is the perpetrator of the other and both are kin, lust is presented as love's darker cousin.

The imagery used to depict love in Sonnet 116 shows how noble and altruistic the ideal of love is. Shakespeare presents it as unconditional in the line "it is an ever-fixed mark", and assures the reader that it does not "alter when it alteration finds". Shakespeare utilizes the natural imagery of the "tempest" to show that love is stronger than nature: it "looks on tempests and is never shaken".

Lust on the other hand is not so worthy. Shakespeare depicts the act of love as "th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame". This is again an example of natural imagery: the barren wasteland is like an arid desert. But even when uncommunicated, this lust is dangerous. Unconsummated lust is given much emotive language and is labelled "murderous, bloody... Savage, extreme, rude" and "cruel" in So


nnet 129. The idea of lust's more worthy mate love standing the test of time can not be further from the truth for lust. Where love is "not Time's fool", lust is whimsical: "Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream." Lust is only strong when it has not been spent, whereas love stands tall and true until the end of time - "(love) bears it out even to the edge of doom."

In Sonnet 138's conclusion , Shakespeare shows the way in which couples are both deluded for the benefit of loving one another. "On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed". The reader is presented with the image of two people telling white lies to further their relationship, but Shakespeare is not unaware of the folly of this. He admits that "love's best habit is a seeming trust", and that "age in love loves not to have love told." We can see that vanity is not affected should love be in place.

Thus while love is held in less of an weighty aspect than Sonnet116, it does nevertheless st

Some common words found in the essay are:
, sonnet 116, love lust, love alters, age love, love sonnet, natural imagery,

Approximate Word count = 648
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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