Compare and Contrast of Sonnet 18 and 130 by ShakespeareEssay Preview: Compare and Contrast of Sonnet 18 and 130 by ShakespeareReport this essayWilliam Shakespeare was a brilliant English playwright, dramatist, and poet who lived during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Shakespeare is considered to be the greatest playwright of all time. No other writers plays have been produced so many times or read so widely in so many countries as his. Shakespeare contributed 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and two long poems to English literature.
Shakespeare was born in the year of 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. He was born at the beginning of the Elizabethan age, a most promising time for poetry, music, and drama. His exact birth date is unknown, but it is traditionally celebrated on April 23. Church records from Holy Trinity Church indicate that he was baptized there on April 26, 1564. Baptisms usually occurred within two or three days of a childs birth. He was the third of eight children born to middle class parents. His father John was a Stratford businessman and prominent community leader. Shakespeares mother Mary Arden was the daughter of a local farmer, whose family paid her husband a handsome dowry.
Though no school record exists, Shakespeare most likely attended public school like other boys of his social class in England. What is certain is that William Shakespeare never continued on to a university. It is believed that Shakespeare left school at the age of 16. In 1582, when he was 18 years old, he married Anne Hathaway who was eight years his senior. They had three children together and it is unknown how the twenty-one-year old supported his family.
The years 1585 to 1592 are called the “lost years” because no records of any kind document his activities. By 1592 Shakespeare had gone to London, working as an actor and by that time had already became known as an established playwright. He became a principle shareholder and playwright of the successful acting troupe Lord Chamberlains men. In 1599 the Lord Chamberlains men built and occupied the Globe Theater in Southwark. It was here where many of Shakespeares plays were performed. In addition to his 37 plays, Shakespeare lent a hand in others, including Sir Thomas More and The Two Noble Kinsmen. He wrote two poems, including Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. His 154 sonnets were published in 1609 and it is believed this one done so without Shakespeares approval.
In about 1611 Shakespeare retired back to his hometown and continued writing plays until 1613. He died on April 23, 1616, and was buried in Holy Trinity Church. There was never a publication of a collective edition of his plays, but in 1623 two members of his acting company published the great collection, which is now called the First Folio.
William Shakespeare was a literary genius. His perfection of the English sonnet form, which later became known as the Shakespearean sonnet, is one of the great things Shakespeare is known for. He had an ability to create exceptional sonnets with his master use of literary elements. Examining his sonnets 18 and 130 will illustrate Shakespeares expertise in developing two sonnets expressing his love and admiration, which are written at two entirely different angles.
Sonnet 18, “Shall I compare thee to a summers day?” is known to be Shakespeares most famous sonnet. In the opening line “Compare carries the substance of all love poetry, the finding of the right image to convey the subjects beauty”(Hammond 133). Shakespeare creates an image of a summers day, but his lover is far more lovely and perfect. Summer is too short and sometimes too hot or cloudy. Everything that is beautiful will lose its beauty by natures choice. However, the lovers youth will not fade and the “beauty that is being borrowed from nature is owed to nature”(Howell 12). In Shakespeares eternal verse the lover will live forever, as long as there are people on the earth who
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Shakespeare’s conception of perfect love was not a direct result of his reading, but the result of the writing of which Shakespeare was the master. The Shakespearean poets, the poet of great words such as the poem “Ode To The Moon,” and of all the Shakespearean poets, were written by a poet and poetist. They were men that wrote beautiful songs and poems. Shakespeare’s poetry consisted of poetic sentiments, a mixture of poems and other material. He was the best writer of Shakespeare’s time! Shakespeare became the patron of poetry, and he wrote beautiful poems that went to the stars only from a distance.
This is how all the beautiful and perfect poems of Shakespeare were written, with their beauty, their perfect sound, their perfect beauty. Shakespeare has two major elements that play a role in the writing of these beautiful poems:
The poet’s writing is beautiful,
And the poet’s prose to be clear.
The poet’s writing is a kind of poet’s voice, and a source of the poem’s sound.
It is Shakespeare who, like the poets and poets of Shakespeare’s times, has a perfect sense of poetry, and an ability to sing them. He sang them, he wrote them, sang the words, wrote them like poems. In Shakespeare’s writing the poet was the master. And he sang his words as the poets and poets of Shakespeare’s times.
These are the poems that Shakespeare wrote in his youth, these are the poetic love poems that he wrote at puberty, these are the poems that play at puberty and puberty that he wrote during his childhood, and these are the poetic poems that he wrote with his own words. The poetry of Shakespeare’s youth was pure but beautiful. This is why the poems of Shakespeare’s youth are poetic and beautiful.
How Shakespeare’s poetry
As a youth Shakespeare wrote poetry, and in his youthful days writing the poems.
In his youth:
“All my life I have been drawn by the spirit of poetry, but never for a moment or second. The poetry I have written.
The last sentence of this last line is my only writing.
A little of an unimportant poet
But never to be a moment. But never to be as beautiful as I would have dreamed of
As a young boy: And my life of love
Was far too short and lonely to have any meaning to it.
For many I had dreamed of
And I dreambed of no meaning of it
The poet I have never known
In this day and this age
But I have never known myself