Love as Obsession
Shakespeare's sonnet number 18, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" and sonnet number 147, "My love is as a fever, longing still" are both manifestations of the same underlying emotion, which is obsession. They both show the necessity of love for the writer's well-being. These sonnets show the extreme range of emotion, from good to bad, that love can encompass. The sonnets show the power of his emotion both when the love is accepted in one sonnet and rejected in the other. The writer has no self identity. He defines himself and his worth by how he perceives love. Ultimately, in both sonnets the writer cannot live without the object of his love. In the first sonnet, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day," Shakespeare expresses his love in a positive light. By comparing his love to a summer's day he shows her warmth and beauty. He goes on to say "Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often
In the second sonnet, "My love is as a fever, longing still" Shakespeare expresses his love in a negative light, and explores his self disgust at his entanglement with obsessive love (Wells and Taylor, 1991). "For that which longer nurseth the disease, Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill, Th' uncertain sickly appetite to please" shows the writers love as a disease itself. The writer is at extreme despair at the loss of love, "Hath left me, and I desperate now approve Desire is death, which physic did except" The writer feels that life is love, and without love death is the only option. The writer realizes that love is gone and the depth of depression is so overwhelming it has forced the writer into irreversible insanity as expresses by "Past cure I am, now reason is past care, And frantic mad with evermore unrest." The writer continues the escalation into unbridled insanity faced with the dreadful truth about love, "My thou
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Approximate Word count = 638
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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