SHAKESPEARES SONNETS

William Shakespeare

You can learn a whole lot about writing and acting by studying the works of William
Shakespeare. Here are some free creative writing prompts that can help you to extract some
writing ideas out of this extremely productive Englishman :).

Love in Shakespeare's Sonnets

Shakespeare's love sonnets describe three different contexts in which love operates, as such; he
depicts a multi-faceted picture of love. ... Love, he says, is an ever-fixed mark that looks on
tempests and is never shaken (Lines 5 and 6). ... His love for the woman prevails and triumphs
over her mere humanity, his love is unrestraine...

1 . Sonnet 1 8 is one of the most famous poems in the English language.

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 1 8 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. Sonnet 18, 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.
Write an essay of 400 words in which you think that beauty is all or is it all? Why do you think
this is the case? How does the speaker use natural imagery to create a picture of beauty?

2. In "Sonnet 29," Shakespeare writes about a narrator, perhaps himself, perhaps some other man,
who at first feels depressed and unlucky, then becomes uplifted by the love that he shares with a
woman. How much is true love worth? Would you pay ten dollars, a hundred dollars, or all the
money of the world for true love? In sonnet 29, William Shakespeare demonstrates the fact that
even though a person may be poor and without any honor, if he has true love, he is richer than
kings. The poem's theme is that even though you may be poor physically and in the eyes of
people, true love is worth more than all the wealth of the world.
Write an essay of 600 words in which you speak of the love of your life. This person can be
living, dead, with you, not with you, etc., it doesn't matter! Try to present the essence of love
and what it means to one.

3. In "Sonnet 116," William Shakespeare deals with imperishable love. The poet, writing
in Shakespearean sonnet structure, addresses a young man of great beauty and promise. He uses
various poetic techniques to relay his theme.
Through his strong belief, the author expresses his theory on love lasting forever. In the opening
lines of the sonnet, Shakespeare states nothing should change "the marriage of true minds,"
denoting absolute accord and complete understanding between husband and wife, if their love is
real. Through the technique of apostrophe, he personifies the North Star - metaphorically "an
ever-fixed mark" - by saying that it "looks on tempests." By indicating the North Star "is never
shaken," he compares it to love, implying that it is always there no matter what, just as true love
should be. In the sestet, which immediately follows the octave, the poet uses imagery to express
how time changes love: "Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks / within his bending
sickle compass come," and that if love is true, beauty should not faze it.
Write an essay of 600 words in which you speak if you were to lose the love of your life. What
would this lead you to do or how far would you go to forget the pain and suffering. Try to
present the essence of not forgetting.

4. Discuss the theme of love is blind and the portrayal of beauty in the sequence as a whole. Is
beauty an immortal ideal, or is it vulnerable to time? How is beauty valued differently in poems
like Sonnets 18 , and 60 than in a poem like Sonnet 146 ? How does beauty contrast with
worth? How is beauty treated in Sonnet 130 ?
Write an essay of 600 words in which you speak of love is blind. That in real life beauty is in
the eyes of the beholder (Plato).