martes, 10 de febrero de 2009

Two trends in Shakespeare's Love Poems (Sonnets, 1609)


In one of them, Shakespeare seems to understand love as a kind of psychological link or attachment between two minds. In the second interpretation of love, he's chosen to look down on 'his mistress'.
If in the first case, his love's neither Time's fool, nor alterable by circumstances, in the second, he finds no nice metaphors he could use to compare her to. Love in Sonnet 116 does not alter, nor bend, like a fixed mark which guided on tempests and carried to the one who loved even to the end of doom. Conversely, in Sonnet 130, he finds his love as rare as any other possible love she would have compared it to.

1.Read both Sheakspeare's sonnets and try to compare them in your own words
2.Explain the special vocabulary that is applied to love and you consider interesting enough.

Love 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-fixèd mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his heighth 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.

Love Sonnet 130

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
http://users.telenet.be/gaston.d.haese/shakespeare.html

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