A sonnet is a poem that consists of 14 lines and rhymes in a certain pattern. William Shakespeare’s sonnets were written in iambic pentameter which is a specific rhyme scheme that consisting of one stressed syllable and one unstressed syllable every five lines. The sonnet is a difficult art form for the poet because of its restrictions on length and meter. But Shakespeare was able to create over 100 sonnets within these limits and though they were published without his knowledge they are all considerably famous. Shakespeare sonnets 18, 73, 97, 116, and 130 all speak similarly of love. In all five of these sonnets Shakespeare uses metaphors and imagery are frequently used in the 14 lined poems.
Beginning with Sonnet 18, throughout the poem Shakespeare compares their love to a summer's day. The first line of the sonnet is “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” and from then on all other lines are devoted to the comparison. In line 2, the speaker specifies what mainly differentiates his love from the summer’s day in saying that they are “more lovely and more temperate” where as summers tend to be an extreme temperature. Line 7 of the sonnet says, “And every fair from fair sometime declines” which refers to the transitioning from summer to autumn and the speaker goes to tell their love that “thy eternal summer shall not fade.“ Then in the final two lines the speaker states that his loves beauty will last forever; “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see/ So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” The entire sonnet was a metaphor for their love's everlasting beauty and there is visual imagery within the comparisons to a summer's day.
Sonnet 73 is full of metaphors in which the speaker compares old age to the season of “When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang”; fall. The speaker introduces their main idea in the first two lines in saying “That time of year thou mayst in me behold/ When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang.” When the speaker says “that time of year’ he is speaking of his age and that it is similar to the time of year when all is dying or coming to an end. The speaker goes to reassert his idea but in a different way in lines 6-7, he says “As after sunset fadeth in the west/ Which by and by black night doth take away.” This displays the speaker's belief that his age is like late “twilight” and the remaining light is slowly dwindling in the night. In line 9 the speaker compares himself to the glowing remnants of a fire of which he then says are “on the ashes of his youth.” In the final two lines, the couplet, the speaker tells his love that they must perceive these things, and that their love must be strengthened by the knowledge that they will soon be parted from the speaker when the speaker, like the fire, is extinguished by time.
In Sonnet 97 the speaker has been away from his love for sometime and in the poem their separation is compared to the bleakness of winter. The poem begins with the speaker saying “How like a winter hath my absence been/ From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!” The speaker simply states that they have been apart for a long time but the following lines go on to paint a picture of the winter when saying, “What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen/ What old December’s bareness everywhere!” In line 5, the speaker says “And yet this time removed was summer’s time,” in reality, the season was that of late summer or early autumn, when all of nature was bearing the fruits of summer’s blooming. Towards the end of the poem in lines 11-12 the speaker says “For summer and his pleasures wait on thee/ And, thou away, the very birds are mute” meaning that summer and his pleasures will wait on the beloved, and when he is gone, even the birds are silent. In the couplet to end the poem the speaker says that the birds may sing when the beloved is gone, but it is with “so dull a cheer” that the leaves, listening, become fearful that winter is upon them.
Love is something that is very unique in every situation and simply can not be defined as one thing. But in sonnet 116 the speaker attempts to define love, by telling both what it is and is not. The speaker says that love—”the marriage of true minds”—is perfect and unchanging; it does not “admit impediments,” and it does not change when it finds changes in the loved one. The speaker goes on to describe what love is through a metaphor, “That looks on tempests and is never shaken/ It is the star to every wandering bark/ Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken,” it is a guiding star to lost ships and cannot be broken in storms. The speaker believes that love is ones guide to clarity and safety. Also, love according to the speaker cannot be broken by ‘storms’. In line 9 the speaker goes on to again explain what love is not, “Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks/ Within his bending sickle’s compass come,” love is not susceptible to time. Lastly, the speaker believes love does not change with hours and weeks: instead, it “bears it out ev’n to the edge of doom.” In the couplet, the speaker shows that love is as he says: if his statements can be proved to be error, he declares, he must never have written a word, and no man can ever have been in love.
Sonnet 130 is nearly done in satire when speaking of the love he has for his beloved; the metaphors are nearly insults. The poem starts with him saying, her eyes are “nothing like the sun,” her lips are less red than coral; compared to white snow, her breasts are dun-colored, and her hairs are like black wires on her head. None of these are things that you would be flattered to hear so from this moment on one can guess that the speaker is being facetious. The speaker continues with these laughable remarks and says he has seen roses separated by color (“damasked”) into red and white, but he sees no such roses in his mistress’s cheeks; and he says the breath that “reeks” from his mistress is less delightful than perfume. In line 9, he admits that, though he loves her voice, music “hath a far more pleasing sound,” and that, though he has never seen a goddess, his mistress—unlike goddesses—walks on the ground. In the couplet, however, the speaker states that, “by heav’n,” he thinks his love as rare and valuable “As any she belied with false compare”—that is, any love in which false comparisons were invoked to describe the loved one’s beauty. Though most of the poem is filled with satirical compliments of his mistress the idea of love and the feeling of it is still there in jest.
My Original Poem
My pleasing drake, you inspire me to write.
How I love the way you love, sing and rap,
Invading my mind day and through the night,
Always dreaming about the overlap.
Let me compare you to a gorgeous moon?
You are more dreamy, beamy and handsome.
Smart sun heats the creamy peaches of June,
And summertime has the gleamy hansom.
How do I love you? Let me count the ways.
I love your romantic beard, voice and eyes.
Thinking of your seamy voice fills my days.
My love for you is the steamy surmise.
Now I must away with a freezing heart,
Remember my good words whilst we're apart.
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare, Shakespeare also spelled Shakspere, (baptized April 26, 1564, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England—died April 23, 1616, Stratford-upon-Avon), was an English poet, dramatist, and actor, often called the English national poet and regarded by many as the greatest dramatist of all time. Shakespeare's works are known throughout the world, but his personal life is covered in mystery. Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. When Shakespeare was 18 he married Anne Hathaway and they’d go on to have three children together: Susanna, Hamnet, and Judith. He became a very important member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men company of theatrical players from roughly 1594 onward. At age 49 (around 1613), he seems to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later.
Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has caused for considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were, in fact, written by others. These theories are often criticized for failing to properly note the fact that few records survive of most commoners of the period.
Shakespeare's most famous works were written between 1589 and 1613. With the exception of the tragic love story Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare's first plays were mostly histories. Henry VI (Parts I, II and III), Richard II and Henry V dramatize the destructive results of weak or corrupt rulers, and have been interpreted by drama historians as Shakespeare's way of justifying the origins of the Tudor Dynasty. It was in William Shakespeare's later period, after 1600, that he wrote the tragedies Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. In these, Shakespeare's characters present vivid impressions of human temperament that are timeless and universal. These moral failures often drive the twists and turns of Shakespeare's plots, destroying the hero and those he loves.
There are seven years of William Shakespeare's life where no records exist after the birth of his twins in 1585. Shakespeare scholars call this period the "lost years," and there is wide speculation on what he was doing during this period. One theory is that he might have gone into hiding for poaching game from the local landlord, Sir Thomas Lucy. Another possibility is that he might have been working as an assistant schoolmaster in Lancashire. It is generally believed he arrived in London in the mid- to late 1580s and may have found work as a horse attendant at some of London's finer theaters, a scenario updated centuries later by the countless aspiring actors and playwrights in Hollywood and Broadway.
By 1599, William Shakespeare and his business partners built their own theater on the south bank of the Thames River, which they called the Globe. In 1605, Shakespeare purchased leases of real estate near Stratford for 440 pounds, which doubled in value and earned him 60 pounds a year. This made him an entrepreneur as well as an artist, and scholars believe these investments gave him the time to write his plays uninterrupted.
William Shakespeare's early plays were written in the conventional style of the day, with elaborate metaphors and rhetorical phrases that didn't always align naturally with the story's plot or characters. However, Shakespeare was very innovative, adapting the traditional style to his own purposes and creating a freer flow of words. With only small degrees of variation, Shakespeare primarily used a metrical pattern consisting of lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter, or blank verse, to compose his plays. At the same time, there are passages in all the plays that deviate from this and use forms of poetry or simple prose. Shakespeare was also influenced by the world around him. He describes the sights and sounds of London in his plays. His works include observations about current political struggles, the fear of diseases, and the popular language of the city's tradesmen and other professionals.
It is said that William Shakespeare died on his 52nd birthday, April 23, 1616, though many scholars believe this is not true. Church records prove he was interred at Trinity Church on April 25, 1616.
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