Essay about Copmaring Shakespeares Sonnets 116 and 147

Copmaring Shakespeares Sonnets 116 and 147 Light/Dark. Comfort/Despair. Love/Hate. These three pairs of words manage to sum up William Shakespeares Sonnet 116 and Sonnet 147, while also demonstrating the duality of Shakespeares heart. Sonnet 116 reveals to a careful reader the aspects of Shakespeares concept of what ideal love is. However, Sonnet 147 shows the danger of believing in this ideal form of love. These two sonnets perfectly complement and clarify each other while also giving the reader insight into William Shakespeares life. To understand these two sonnets completely, one must first have a little background information concerning the sequence of the Sonnets and William Shakespeares life.†¦show more content†¦Each poem reflects the emotions that Shakespeare experiences with the duality of his love. Although each of these poems only show one half of this duality, Sonnet 144 expresses both while giving a further basis for the understanding of Sonnet 116 and Sonnet 147. Sonnet 144 opens with the line T wo loves I have of comfort and despair, (1). When used as a foundation, this opening line reveals that the reader can expect one of the two sonnets to deal with the comfort of love while the other deals with the despair of love. Shakespeare goes on to say, The better angel is a man right fair, / The worser spirit a woman, colored ill. (144.3-4) which shows that he considers his young friend to be the comfort aspect of love and his dark woman to be the despair aspect of love. Shakespeare goes on to say that the dark woman tempted his young friend from his side. This shows that an affair has occurred between the young man and the dark woman. Taking this poem as a basis, the reader can better understand how Sonnet 116 deals with the comfort of love and how Sonnet 147 deals with the despair of love. Sonnet 116 can be viewed by the reader in two different ways. It can be seen as a soliloquy by the author written to his young friend about their friendship or it can be seen as a lett er written to the young friend about Shakespeares view of what ideal love is. In either case, it was written after the affair between