1. Themes, moods and literary craft in W.

Shakespeare's poetic work:

Sonnets: 18, 66, 91, 116, Venus and Adonis
Modern readers associate the sonnet form with romantic love and with good reason: the first
sonnets written in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italy celebrated the poets feelings for
their beloveds and their patrons. These sonnets were addressed to stylized, lionized women
and dedicated to wealthy noblemen, who supported poets with money and other gifts, usually
in return for lofty praise in print. Shakespeare dedicated his sonnets to Mr. W. H., and the
identity of this man remains unknown. He dedicated an earlier set of poems, Venus and
Adonis and Rape of Lucrece, to Henry Wriothesly, earl of Southampton, but its not known
what Wriothesly gave him for this honor. In contrast to tradition, Shakespeare addressed most
of his sonnets to an unnamed young man, possibly Wriothesly. Addressing sonnets to a young
man was unique in Elizabethan England. Furthermore, Shakespeare used his sonnets to
explore different types of love between the young man and the speaker, the young man and
the dark lady, and the dark lady and the speaker. In his sequence, the speaker expresses
passionate concern for the young man, praises his beauty, and articulates what we would now
call homosexual desire. The woman of Shakespeares sonnets, the so-called dark lady, is
earthy, sexual, and faithlesscharacteristics in direct opposition to lovers described in other
sonnet sequences, including Astrophil and Stella, by Sir Philip Sidney, a contemporary of
Shakespeare, who were praised for their angelic demeanor, virginity, and steadfastness.
Several sonnets also probe the nature of love, comparing the idealized love found in poems
with the messy, complicated love found in real life.
Several sonnets equate being in love with being in a pitiful state: as demonstrated by the
poems, love causes fear, alienation, despair, and physical discomfort, not the pleasant
emotions or euphoria we usually associate with romantic feelings. The speaker alternates
between professing great love and professing great worry as he speculates about the young
mans misbehavior and the dark ladys multiple sexual partners. As the young man and the
dark lady begin an affair, the speaker imagines himself caught in a love triangle, mourning the
loss of his friendship with the man and love with the woman, and he laments having fallen in
love with the woman in the first place. In Sonnet 137 , the speaker personifies love, calls him
a simpleton, and criticizes him for removing his powers of perception. It was love that caused
the speaker to make mistakes and poor judgments. Elsewhere the speaker calls love a disease
as a way of demonstrating the physical pain of emotional wounds. Throughout his sonnets,
Shakespeare clearly implies that love hurts. Yet despite the emotional and physical pain, like
the speaker, we continue falling in love. Shakespeare shows that falling in love is an
inescapable aspect of the human conditionindeed, expressing love is part of what makes us
human.
The Responsibilities of Being Beautiful
Shakespeare portrays beauty as conveying a great responsibility in the sonnets addressed to
the young man, Sonnets 1126 . Here the speaker urges the young man to make his beauty

immortal by having children, a theme that appears repeatedly throughout the poems: as an
attractive person, the young man has a responsibility to procreate. Later sonnets demonstrate
the speaker, angry at being cuckolded, lashing out at the young man and accusing him of
using his beauty to hide immoral acts. Sonnet 95 compares the young mans behavior to a
canker in the fragrant rose (2 ) or a rotten spot on an otherwise beautiful flower. In other
words, the young mans beauty allows him to get away with bad behavior, but this bad
behavior will eventually distort his beauty, much like a rotten spot eventually spreads. Nature
gave the young man a beautiful face, but it is the young mans responsibility to make sure that
his soul is worthy of such a visage.
Motifs

Art vs. Time

Shakespeare, like many sonneteers, portrays time as an enemy of love. Time destroys love
because time causes beauty to fade, people to age, and life to end. One common convention of
sonnets in general is to flatter either a beloved or a patron by promising immortality through
verse. As long as readers read the poem, the object of the poems love will remain alive. In
Shakespeares Sonnet15 , the speaker talks of being in war with time (13 ): time causes the
young mans beauty to fade, but the speakers verse shall entomb the young man and keep
him beautiful. The speaker begins by pleading with time in another sonnet, yet he ends by
taunting time, confidently asserting that his verse will counteract times ravages. From our
contemporary vantage point, the speaker was correct, and art has beaten time: the young man
remains young since we continue to read of his youth in Shakespeares sonnets.
Through art, nature and beauty overcome time. Several sonnets use the seasons to symbolize
the passage of time and to show that everything in naturefrom plants to peopleis mortal.
But nature creates beauty, which poets capture and render immortal in their verse.
Sonnet 106 portrays the speaker reading poems from the past and recognizing his beloveds
beauty portrayed therein. The speaker then suggests that these earlier poets were prophesizing
the future beauty of the young man by describing the beauty of their contemporaries. In other
words, past poets described the beautiful people of their day and, like Shakespeares speaker,
perhaps urged these beautiful people to procreate and so on, through the poetic ages, until the
birth of the young man portrayed in Shakespeares sonnets. In this waythat is, as beautiful

people of one generation produce more beautiful people in the subsequent generation and as
all this beauty is written about by poetsnature, art, and beauty triumph over time.

Symbols: flowers and trees, stars, weather and the seasons (shall i compare thee to a
summers day)

Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summers day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summers lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or natures changing course untrimmd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderst in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Summary
The speaker opens the poem with a question addressed to the beloved: Shall I compare thee
to a summers day? The next eleven lines are devoted to such a comparison. In line 2, the
speaker stipulates what mainly differentiates the young man from the summers day: he is
more lovely and more temperate. Summers days tend toward extremes: they are shaken by
rough winds; in them, the sun (the eye of heaven) often shines too hot, or too dim. And
summer is fleeting: its date is too short, and it leads to the withering of autumn, as every fair
from fair sometime declines. The final quatrain of the sonnet tells how the beloved differs
from the summer in that respect: his beauty will last forever (Thy eternal summer shall not
fade...) and never die. In the couplet, the speaker explains how the beloveds beauty will
accomplish this feat, and not perish because it is preserved in the poem, which will last
forever; it will live as long as men can breathe or eyes can see.

Commentary

This sonnet is certainly the most famous in the sequence of Shakespeares sonnets; it may be
the most famous lyric poem in English. Among Shakespeares works, only lines such as To
be or not to be and Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? are better-known. This is
not to say that it is at all the best or most interesting or most beautiful of the sonnets; but the
simplicity and loveliness of its praise of the beloved has guaranteed its place.
On the surface, the poem is simply a statement of praise about the beauty of the beloved;
summer tends to unpleasant extremes of windiness and heat, but the beloved is always mild
and temperate. Summer is incidentally personified as the eye of heaven with its gold
complexion; the imagery throughout is simple and unaffected, with the darling buds of
May giving way to the eternal summer, which the speaker promises the beloved. The
language, too, is comparatively unadorned for the sonnets; it is not heavy with alliteration or
assonance, and nearly every line is its own self-contained clausealmost every line ends with
some punctuation, which effects a pause.
Sonnet 18 is the first poem in the sonnets not to explicitly encourage the young man to have
children. The procreation sequence of the first 17 sonnets ended with the speakers
realization that the young man might not need children to preserve his beauty; he could also
live, the speaker writes at the end of Sonnet 17 , in my rhyme. Sonnet18 , then, is the first
rhymethe speakers first attempt to preserve the young mans beauty for all time. An
important theme of the sonnet (as it is an important theme throughout much of the sequence)
is the power of the speakers poem to defy time and last forever, carrying the beauty of the
beloved down to future generations. The beloveds eternal summer shall not fade precisely
because it is embodied in the sonnet: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, the
speaker writes in the couplet, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Sonnet 66
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,

And strength by limping sway disabled

And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.
The poet laments the corruption and dishonesty of the world, from which he desires to be
released. This is a sonnet which strikes a chord in almost any age, for it tells the same old
story, that graft and influence reign supreme, and that no inherent merit is ever a guarantee of
success. For that depends on social structures and conditions already set in place long ago. As
often as not they aid and promote the unworthy, the malicious, the wealthy, the incompetent
and those who are just good at manipulation of the system.
A parallel passage is found in Hamlet, in the famous To be or not to be soliloquy, but
Hamlets world-weariness springs from rather different causes. However the phrase the
spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes is an interesting summary of the complaint of
this sonnet.
Sonnet 91
Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
Some in their wealth, some in their bodys force,
Some in their garments, though new-fangled ill,
Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;
And every humor hath his adjunct pleasure,
Wherein it finds a joy above the rest.
But these particulars are not my measure;
All these I better in one general best.
Thy love is better than high birth to me,
Richer than wealth, prouder than garments' cost,
Of more delight than hawks or horses be;
And having thee, of all mens pride I boast;
Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take
All this away, and me most wretched make.
The poet examines his love for the young man in a more relaxed, less urgent vein. He first
catalogues different activities that people like to immerse themselves in, then he admits that
he values the youth's precarious love more than any other sport or possession he already listed
in the first quatrain; finally, he concludes of the young man, "And having thee, of all men's
pride I boast." However, he remains doubtful about any joint future with his young love:

"Wretched in this alone: that thou mayst take / All this away and me most wretched make."
Coming as they do as the end couplet in the sonnet, these lines show just how vulnerable the
poet is, for the word "wretched" appears twice in the couplet, and the complete stop after the
alliterative phrase "me most wretched make" emphasizes the empty void that the poet is so
fearful of when the youth finally abandons him.
Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
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.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Despite the confessional tone in this sonnet, there is no direct reference to the youth. The
general context, however, makes it clear that the poet's temporary alienation refers to the
youth's inconstancy and betrayal, not the poet's, although coming as it does on the heels of the
previous sonnet, the poet may be trying to convince himself again that "Now" he loves the
youth "best." Sonnet 116, then, seems a meditative attempt to define love, independent of
reciprocity, fidelity, and eternal beauty: "Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks /
Within his bending sickle's compass come." After all his uncertainties and apologies, Sonnet
116 leaves little doubt that the poet is in love with love.
The essence of love and friendship for the poet, apparently, is reciprocity, or mutuality. In
Sonnet 116, for example, the ideal relationship is referred to as "the marriage of true minds," a
union that can be realized by the dedicated and faithful: "Let me not to the marriage of true
minds / Admit impediments." The marriage service in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer
"If any of you know cause or just impediment" provides the model for the sonnet's
opening lines. In them, we see the poet's attitude toward love, which he proceeds to define
first negatively. He explains what love is not, and then he positively defines what it is. The
"ever-fixed mark" is the traditional sea mark and guide for mariners the North Star
whose value is inestimable although its altitude its "height" has been determined.
Unlike physical beauty, the star is not subject to the ravages of time; nor is true love, which is
not "Time's fool."

The poet then introduces the concepts of space and time, applying them to his ideal of true
love: "Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, / But bears it out even to the edge of
doom." Note that the verb "alters" is lifted directly from line 3, in which the poet describes
what love is not. "Bears it out" means survive; "edge of doom," Judgment Day. Finally, with
absolute conviction, the poet challenges others to find him wrong in his definition: "If this be
error and upon me proved, / I never writ, nor no man ever loved." Just how secure the poet is
in his standards of friendship and love, which he hopes that he and the youth can achieve, is
evident in this concluding couplet; he stakes his own poetry as his wager that love is all he has
described it to be.
Venus and Adonis
As Adonis is preparing to go hunting, Venus "seizeth on his sweating palm" and "Backward
she push'd him, as she would be thrust" (for purposes of sexual intercourse). We find next that
"Panting he lies, and breatheth in her face", while Venus tells him "Be bold to play, our sport
is not in sight." She persuades him to kiss her, although Adonis is not very interested, thinking
he is too young, and cares only for hunting. After they part, Adonis is soon killed in a hunting
"accident".
Venus and Adonis comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book 10, known to Shakespeare in the
translation by Arthur Golding (1567, with subsequent revisions). Ovid told of how Venus took
the beautiful Adonis as her first mortal lover. They were long-time companions, with the
goddess hunting alongside her lover. She warns him of the tale
of Atalanta and Hippomenes to dissuade him from hunting dangerous animals; he disregards
the warning, and is killed by a boar.
Shakespeare developed this basic narrative into a poem of 1,194 lines. His chief innovation
was to make Adonis refuse Venus's offer of herself. It has been argued (by Erwin Panofsky)
[citation needed]
that Shakespeare might have seen a copy of Titian's Venus and Adonis, a painting
that could be taken to show Adonis refusing to join Venus in embraces. However, Shakespeare
had already shown a liking for activist heroines, forced to woo and pursue an evasive male
in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
The other innovation was a kind of observance of the Aristotelian unities: the action takes
place in one location, lasts from morning till morning, and focuses on the two main
characters.