Shakespearean Sonnets
Major Themes–Love, Life, Death and Time
Introduction
Shakespeare was one of the major sonneteers of the Elizabethan age. Nobody else could have his depth and variety, his simplicity but richness of thought. The main theme of his sonnets is love and the idealisation of love. Shakespeare passionately recorded his love in the sonnets addressed to his male friend. Of course, Shakespeare here is not concerned with sex-love. Here in is found a concept of love which is far apart from the question of sex. In the sonnets addressed to the Dark Lady, the poet expresses his feeling of disgust–his lust for the lady. With utmost poetic earnestness, he brings out in his sonnets, addressed to the male friend, the conflict between the invincible power of time and the unchanging devotion to love and vindicates the power of his art to stand against the cruel blow of time.
Examples from Major Sonnets
Actually Shakespeare unlocked his heart in his sonnets. In the intensity of passion and sincerity of feeling we can hear the warm heart beats of the poet. In the sonnets addressed to his male friend, Shakespeare is warm, sensitive, vital and radiant with delight. Such sincerity of feeling cannot be expressed unless one experiences it.
For example in the sonnet 18 Shakespeare compares his friend’s beauty with the beauty of the English summer and finds his friend’s beauty superior to that of the summer. In this transient world, he wants to eternalize his love. In the sonnet 64, the poet is sincere and passionate at the thought of the end of love. He trembles to think—
“Time will come and take my love away.”
Here Shakespeare deliberately laid bare his soul.
In some of the sonnets, the poet’s intense feeling of love leads to his speculation on the conflict between time and love. The poet speaks of the inevitable progress of death, decay and destruction, but he declares the triumph of love over the ravages of time. For example, in the sonnet 65, the poet speaks of the invincible power of time, but he is enlivened with his expectation of the enduring power of his verse to preserve his love and protect this from the decay of time. He states hopefully–
“That in my black ink my love may still shine bright.”
Obviously the sonnets are dominated by a note of melancholy, but they end with a note of consolation and delight. Again we may cite the example of sonnet 65, in which the despondent feeling is aggravated further by the poet’s fearful realization that there is no power or force to resist the cruel blow of time or to stop its swift march. A melancholy mood, thus, runs as in the previous sonnet all through this sonnet. Of course, the sonnet is not at all sad. It contains consolation, too, for the poet’s depressed heart.
Conclusion
Shakespeare’s sonnets are, thus, enriched with the lofty idealism of love, but they also celebrate the classical concept that the verse preserves, against the ravages of time, the love that it commemorates. The poet is found to immortalize his lofty ideal of love through his verse. This is invincible, destructive, yet, love is strong enough to withstand its ravages and even triumphs over it.
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