Preview

Sonnet 107 by William Shakespeare-literary analysis.

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1213 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Sonnet 107 by William Shakespeare-literary analysis.
William Shakespeare 's

Sonnet 107

Nowadays William Shakespeare is renown as one of the world 's greatest and most prolific dramatists of all times.Both tragedies such as "Romeo and Juliet", "Hamlet", "Anthony and Cleopatra", and light-hearted comedies like "The Taming of the Shrew" and "A Midsummer Night 's Dream" are still box-office successes in theatres all around the globe.Yet, besides being a playwright, Shakespeare has also exercised his complex literary talents in poetry, appreciated in this domain especially due to his sonnets.

The sonnets written by Shakespeare generally follow the path opened by Petrarch in this literary genre two centuries before.These are actually poem forms consisting of 14 lines, each with 10 stressed and unstressed syllables known as iambic pentameter, with a set rhyme scheme of: a b a b c d c d e f e f g g. The rhymes may be ear-rhymes or eye-rhymes: an ear-rhyme is one that rhymes in sound, e.g. "soul" and "control"; an eye-rhyme is one that rhymes by sight, e.g. "presage" and "age".

Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, all addressed directly to certain implicit readers-a young friend(his patron), a rival poet and a dark mistress.There have been numerous controversies in today 's literary critique regarding the exact identities of the sonnets ' subjects.

Among the most recurrent themes are beauty, love, witt, nobility, but also doom, fallibility and separation.Thus, Shakespeare doesn 't deal solely with the pleasant aspects of life, but also exploits the flaws and downfalls of humanity.These very general themes are exploited in an extremely personal context.This correlation between the author 's personal micro-universe and the macro-universe also appears in Sonnet 107, in which the poet seems to suggest a demise in his relationship with his patron.

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul,

Of the wide world, dreaming on things to come,

Can yet the lease of my true love control,

Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.

The

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Sonnets were popular in the Elizabethan period because it was thought of as contemporary. One achievement by the English was their literature. Sonnets gained attention because of the way it was used as poetry. A sonnet has a distinct form. It consists of fourteen lines, three quatrains and a couplet. Shakespearean sonnets have a distinct rhyming scheme; a-b-a-b-c-d-c-d-e-f-e-f-g-g. It is also written in iambic pentameter, where a pattern of unstressed then stressed syllables are repeated five times in the line. The prologue of Romeo and Juliet is written in sonnet form and talks about what happens throughout the play.…

    • 717 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    First of all, sonnets are interesting mystery puzzles of literature, but yet it’s an important part of it too. One of the most renowned poets of all time is no less William Shakespeare. He has written plenty of sonnets, in which is formed by three quatrains and a couplet. What is most interesting though, are that many of his sonnets are similar and some have highly contrasting styles. It’s as if you could tell that Shakespeare was a maudlin person, and his emotions and feelings can change drastically. There are happy and peaceful sonnets by him, as well as sonnets full of anger and hatred. Sonnet number 18 and 129 can be a good example of this, so I chose to make a comparison between them in this final paper.…

    • 882 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    William Shakespeare wrote one hundred fifty-four sonnets. A sonnet is a form of lyric poetry with fourteen lines and a specific rhyme scheme. (Lyric poetry presents the deep feelings and emotions of the poet as opposed to poetry that tells a story or presents a witty observation.) .The topic of most sonnets written in Shakespeare 's time is love–or a theme related to love.…

    • 552 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    How to Write a Sonnet

    • 733 Words
    • 3 Pages

    If you're writing the most familiar kind of sonnet, the Shakespearean, the rhyme scheme is this:…

    • 733 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Senior theme

    • 1264 Words
    • 4 Pages

    William Shakespeare was one of the most influential poets of his time and still is today because how well he immortalizes the emotions in his poems.…

    • 1264 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The first 126 sonnets are addressed to a young man and the last 26 to a woman. The sonnets were first published in 1609 quarto with full stylized title: SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS. Sonnets 138 and 144 had previously been published in the 1599 miscellany The Passionate Pilgrim. The quarto ends with “A Lover’s Complaint”, a narrative poem of 47 seven line stanzas written in rhyme royal though some scholars have argued convincingly against Shakespeare’s authorship of the poem. There were three main characters in his sonnets: The Fair Youth (1-126), The Darn Lady (127-154), and The Rival Poet (78-86). The sonnets are almost all constructed from three quatrains, which are four lined stanzas, and a final couplet composed in iambic pentameter. This is also the meter used extensively in Shakespeare's plays. The sonnets to the young man express overwhelming, obsessional love. The main issue of debate is has always been whether it remained platonic or became physical. The first 17 poems, traditionally called the procreation sonnets, are addressed to the young man and urging him to marry and have children in order to immortalized his beauty by passing it to the next generation. The sonnets include a dedication to one “Mr. W.H.”. The identity of this person remains a mystery and, since the 19th century, has provoked a great deal of…

    • 1705 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Over hundreds of years, it comes to no surprise that many scholars have found the sonnets effective in revealing insight into the biography of William Shakespeare. The emotional pressure contained in many of the sonnets and the fact that many, if not all, are dedicated to a man named ‘Mr. W.H.', provide important clues to Shakespeare's life. It begins with the sonnets' dedication, a passage written by Shakespeare that opens a world of controversy amongst scholars. The dedication runs as follows:…

    • 1258 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The sonnet is a satire of the conventional love sonnet popular in the Elizabethan period. The conversational rhythm, which departs from the strict iambic pentameter of the sonnet form, is indicative of the light-hearted mockery of traditional…

    • 1487 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Sonnet 138

    • 1557 Words
    • 7 Pages

    In order for a poem to be classified as a sonnet, it must meet certain structural requirements, and Sonnet 138, "When my love swears that she is made of truth," is a perfect example. Shakespeare employs the traditional rhyme scheme of the English sonnet, the poem is made up of three quatrains and a rhyming couplet, and iambic pentameter is the predominant meter. However, it would be an error to approach this poem as a traditional Shakespearean love sonnet. It is a ‘love' poem in the sense that a relationship between two lovers is the central theme, but the reader is offered a somewhat unexpected viewpoint. The stylistic constraints of the sonnet form are extremely advantageous here, for they serve as a backdrop against which the poem's content can be dramatically highlighted, as well as reinforcing the eventual impression that the poem describes an emotionally constraining relationship. In this essay I will investigate the tools with which Shakespeare constructs this unconventional love poem.…

    • 1557 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Shakespeare Sonnet 29

    • 601 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Williams Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 29” is Shakespeare starts the first quatrain with himself talking of disgrace in his fortune and in the eyes of others. In the second quatrain, Shakespeare takes the inward thoughts and looks outward with coveting eyes and wishes he could be a different man. By the third quatrain, the poet thinks upon the young man to whom the poem is addressing, which makes him assume a more optimistic view of his own life. The speaker compares such a change in mood to a lark rising from the early morning darkness at sunrise. Finally, the speaker masterfully closes the sonnet by declaring an emotional remembrance of his friend's love which is enough for him to value his position in life more than a king’s friendship. Several poetic devices enhance his use of poetic imagery, figurative language, and sounds to create a unifying effect throughout his work, thus enabling him to express many intricate emotions in simply fourteen lines.…

    • 601 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Shakespeare is a great playwright, and sonneteer, his work is admired by many people world wide and he proves to have been very good with his work on love in his writings. His sonnets are special, in that the overall perspective is not expected to be given in such a way; meaning that readers would expect that a male poet of his time would give more attention to the love of the female rather than writing 126 out of 154 sonnets for a young man more or less. For this paper I will be presenting the three most famous and most favored sonnets of the collection that are going to stand as very efficient examples of the explanation of the different forms of love expressed in the group of sonnets. I will start with sonnet 18 that is one which is proved…

    • 3174 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Shakespeare Sonnet 2 Tone

    • 1152 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Shakespeare uses words such as “disdains,” “repair,” and “posterity” to break up the flow of the sonnet. The sonnet does not flow incredibly easily, like most of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and does not have a really lyrical sense to it. It is more of a speech than a song. The tonal change occurs at line 12, right at the rhyming couplet. The whole sonnet up until that point is basically Shakespeare telling W.H. that all his earthly beauty will be for nothing if he does not have children. At the couplet, Shakespeare offers W.H. a way out of dying along with his image: reproduce. The last line of the sonnet is very threatening. It promises W.H. that if he does not have children then all his beauty will be meaningless because it will die with him. The poem gradually gets more serious as it progresses, starting off with a gentle nudge to get W.H. to look in the mirror and convince himself that having children is the best way to preserve his beauty, and finally in the last line Shakespeare warns W.H. that he will die with his image if he does not. The diction in this sonnet chops it up to make it more speech like than songlike. Shakespeare uses alliteration in this poem with words such as “thou though” and “thine” in line 11, and words like, “face” and “form” in line 2, along with “fresh,” in line 3. Shakespeare also uses antithesis when he puts words like “fond” and “tomb” right near each other in line 7, or the words, “renewest” and…

    • 1152 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Shakespeare Sonnet 138

    • 1895 Words
    • 8 Pages

    A common conception of William Shakespeare’s poetry entails complex language and hidden meanings. Shakespeare is famous for his ability to author a web of images that creates layers of interpretations and understandings. In Sonnet 138 however, Shakespeare is more direct in describing his relationship with his lover by avoiding imagery and metaphors, explaining to the reader that this seemingly unconventional relationship is indeed justified. Shakespeare constructs a persona of the speaker in a way that establishes a casual and conversational relationship with the reader. This allows for an open disclosure of the mutual hypocrisies between himself and his lover while leaving his steadfast candor to convince the reader that Shakespeare’s affirmations concerning love are acceptable. Shakespeare’s elimination of imagery allows for a reliance on diction that he takes advantage of by selecting words with double meanings, creating a reflexive manner about the poem for the reader to explore. Shakespeare conveys the meaning of the poem, that mutual deceit is compatible with love, with the seemingly straightforward language that connects the reader to the speaker while forcing the reader to think twice about certain words that deepen the surface understanding.…

    • 1895 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The sonnet, being one of the most traditional and recognized forms of poetry, has been used and altered in many time periods by writers to convey different messages to the audience. The strict constraints of the form have often been used to parallel the subject in the poem. Many times, the first three quatrains introduce the subject and build on one another, showing progression in the poem. The final couplet brings closure to the poem by bringing the main ideas together. On other occasions, the couplet makes a statement of irony or refutes the main idea with a counter statement. It leaves the reader with a last impression of what the author is trying to say. Shakespeare's "Sonnet 65" is one example of Shakespearian sonnet form and it works with the constraints of this structure to question how one can escape the ravages of time on love and beauty. Shakespeare shows that even the objects in nature least vulnerable to time like brass, stone, and iron are mortal and eventually are destroyed. Of course the more fragile aspects of nature will die if these things do. The final couplet gives hope and provides a solution to the dilemma of time by having the author overcome mortality with his immortal writings.…

    • 1885 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    When you love someone you respect, appreciate, and do everything in your power not to hurt them. There is a way of expressing your love to someone, through a sonnet. A sonnet is a fourteen line poem using a formal rhyme scheme. William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright, and actor widely recognized. One of his most famous works is the 154 Sonnets. These sonnets are about passage of time, love, beauty, and mortality. In the sonnets his view of love is different. In sonnet 118 he is talking about his waywardness and unfaithfulness. William Shakespeare’s view of love in sonnet 118 is uncontrollable. He explains that love is something you cannot control.…

    • 699 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays