This slide will provide a glimpse of Shakespearean Sonnets. One can find it effective for the study.

1. Topic: Selected
Sonnets by
William
Shakespeare
Presented By:
Monir Hossen
Lecturer
Department of English
Uttara University, Bangladesh
Course Code: Eng: 405; Title: Shakespeare
Welcome to
Department of
English
Uttara University

2. Introduction
William Shakespeare is the greatest dramatist of the world.
During the Elizabethan period he has contributed a lot in
constructing new form of literature. He has a lot of
contribution in field of English language too. He also wrote
sonnets where he made a sophisticated pattern which is
different of Petrarchan sonnets (Italian Sonnets). He has a
keen observation of human nature. As he has very good
realization about human nature he portrays his character life
like. His art of characterization is a very unique which has
made him versatile in style. His sonnets represent his strong
passion for love and his approach towards glorifying woman.

3. Comment on Shakespeare
He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets,
had the largest and most comprehensive soul.
John Dryden (1631-1700), Essay of Dramatic Poesy
Soule of the Age!
The applause! delight! The wonder of our stage!
Ben Jonson (1573 - 1637), Preface to the First Folio
He was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books
to read nature. He looked inwards, and found her there.
John Dryden (1631–1700) Essay of Dramatic Poesy

4. Biography of William Shakespeare
 Name : William Shakespeare
 Occupation : Poet, Playwright, Philosopher.
 Birth Date : April 23, 1564
 Death Date : April 23, 1616
 Education : King's New School
 Place of Birth : Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom
 Place of Death : Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom
 Nickname : "Bard of Avon“ "Swan of Avon” "The
Bard“
 Works : Poem (154 Sonnets) & Drama: 37 Plays

5. William Shakespeare( 1564-1616)

6. Sonnet XVIII (18)
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

7. Analysis
This is one of the most famous of all the sonnets, justifiably so. But it
would be a mistake to take it entirely in isolation, for it links in with so
many of the other sonnets through the themes of the descriptive power of
verse; the ability of the poet to depict the fair youth adequately, or not; and
the immortality conveyed through being hymned in these 'eternal lines'. It is
noticeable that here the poet is full of confidence that his verse will live as
long as there are people drawing breath upon the earth, whereas later he
apologises for his poor wit and his humble lines which are inadequate to
encompass all the youth's excellence. Now, perhaps in the early days of his
love, there is no such self-doubt and the eternal summer of the youth is
preserved forever in the poet's lines. The poem also works at a rather
curious level of achieving its objective through dispraise. The summer's day
is found to be lacking in so many respects (too short, too hot, too rough,
sometimes too dingy), but curiously enough one is left with the abiding
impression that 'the lovely boy' is in fact like a summer's day at its best, fair,
warm, sunny, temperate, one of the darling buds of May, and that all his
beauty has been wonderfully highlighted by the comparison.

8. Sonnet 147:
My love is as a fever, longing still
By William Shakespeare
My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
Th’ uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve

9. Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,
At random from the truth vainly expressed:
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

10. Analysis
 The speaker begins by comparing his "love" to a "fever."
(Translation: someone's got this dude all hot and bothered.) He
says the fever's not getting any better because it's "feeding" on the
thing that makes it worse. (Dang. It sounds like our lovesick—or
maybe lustsick—speaker is saying his sexual appetite is unhealthy
and out of control.)
 Next, he compares his ability to "reason" to a doctor who's been
trying to help cure him of his disease. (Does this guy love
metaphors, or what?) Problem is, this "physician" is totally mad at
him and won't help him anymore because the speaker's a lousy
patient and doesn't follow medical advice. (Hmm. Sounds like
somebody is feeling guilty because his lust is a lot stronger than his
ability to act like a rational, thinking person.)

11. Continued
 The speaker says he's super desperate now because he knows
desire is fatal, especially since he didn't listen to his doctor's
advice about avoiding that thing (sex) that's making him sick.
Oh, boy. Now we're beginning to wonder if this "disease" is
more than just a metaphor for his unhealthy sexual At this point,
the speaker starts to sound as delirious as a feverish patient. He
says he's past the point of hoping for a cure because he's lost his
mind. He can't get any sleep at night and his thoughts are always
desire. Because it kind of sounds like he may have an STD.
racing. Plus, he's been talking like a madman and raving on and
on about a bunch of stuff that's totally untrue.
 Then, out of nowhere, the dude stops complaining and slings
some nasty accusations at his mistress. He tells her that he's
been going on and on like a crazy person about how beautiful
and honest and good she is. But it turns out that she's ugly and
nasty and totally corrupt. Uh-oh. Sounds like someone got
cheated on.

12. Sonnet 144
Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
And, whether that my angel be turn’d fiend,
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell,
But being both from me both to each friend,
I guess one angel in another’s hell.
Yet this shall I ne’er know, but live in doubt,
Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

13. Analysis
I love two people: one brings me comfort, the other despair.
Like two angels, they’re always suggesting things to me. The
good angel is a fair-haired man; the bad one is a dark
complexioned woman. To take me swiftly into hell, my evil
female tempts my good angel away from me, trying to turn
him into a devil, corrupting him with her evil self-assurance.
And whether that angel has indeed turned into a fiend is
something I suspect but can’t be sure about. But since they
are both away from me and friends with each other I’m
guessing that one angel is inside the other’s hell. I’ll never
know, though, and I’ll live in doubt until my bad angel shoots
my good one out of hell.

14. 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.

15. Analysis
This sonnet attempts to define love, by telling both what it is and is
not. In the first quatrain, the speaker says that love—”the marriage
of true minds”—is perfect and unchanging; it does not “admit
impediments,” and it does not change when it find changes in the
loved one. In the second quatrain, the speaker tells what love is
through a metaphor: a guiding star to lost ships (“wand’ring barks”)
that is not susceptible to storms (it “looks on tempests and is never
shaken”).
In the third quatrain, the speaker again describes what love is not: it
is not susceptible to time. Though beauty fades in time as rosy lips
and cheeks come within “his bending sickle’s compass,” love does
not change with hours and weeks: instead, it “bears it out ev’n to the
edge of doom.” In the couplet, the speaker attests to his certainty that
love is as he says: if his statements can be proved to be error, he
declares, he must never have written a word, and no man can ever
have been in love.

16. 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 damask'd, 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.

17. Analysis
This sonnet compares the speaker’s lover to a number of other
beauties—and never in the lover’s favor. Her eyes are “nothing
like the sun,” her lips are less red than coral; compared to white
snow, her breasts are dun-colored, and her hairs are like black
wires on her head. In the second quatrain, the speaker says he
has seen roses separated by color (“damasked”) into red and
white, but he sees no such roses in his mistress’s cheeks; and he
says the breath that “reeks” from his mistress is less delightful
than perfume. In the third quatrain, he admits that, though he
loves her voice, music “hath a far more pleasing sound,” and that,
though he has never seen a goddess, his mistress—unlike
goddesses—walks on the ground. In the couplet, however, the
speaker declares that, “by heav’n,” he thinks his love as rare and
valuable “As any she belied with false compare”—that is, any love
in which false comparisons were invoked to describe the loved
one’s beauty.

18. SONNET 151
Love is too young to know what conscience is;
Yet who knows not, conscience is born of love?
Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,
Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove.
For thou betraying me, I do betray
My nobler part to my gross body's treason;
My soul doth tell my body that he may
Triumph in love; flesh stays no farther reason,
But rising at thy name, doth point out thee
As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride,
He is contented thy poor drudge to be,
To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.
No want of conscience hold it that I call
Her 'love,' for whose dear love I rise and fall.

19. Analysis
One of the most puzzling sonnets, because the logic of it is not at all clear,
and because there is very little in the literature of the time which gives clues
as to how we should interpret it. Most of the Elizabethan sonnets are entirely
restrained, and one almost believes that no thought of sensual pleasure could
ever have entered the lover's head. To a certain extent this is mere
convention, and one has to read between the lines to see that complaints of
the beloved's coldness, or that she is harder than flint and rock, imply that she
refuses to give any sexual favours, not even a kiss.
Occasionally a sonneteer oversteps the mark. Sidney, for example gives
Stella a kiss while she is sleeping, and also writes a sonnet on desire, which I
give below. But there is only one other sonnet which I know of among the
many produced by Elizabethan sonnet writers which, like this one, oversteps
the conventional bounds of what it is permissible to say of sexual desire.
Sonnet 76 of Barnabe Barne's sequence Parthenophil and Parthenope
instructs his 'upright parts of pleasure' to fall down, and tells his wanton
thighs that they cannot entwine themselves round his mistress's thighs, as he
had hoped. (The sonnet is given in full below). The sonnet may have had
some influence on this one of Shakespeare's.

20. Analysis
 However none of this is much use in guiding our interpretations,
for we lack the background knowledge of the fault that he is
charged with, which he threatens to throw back upon his
mistress, and we do not have information from other sources
that Cupid and conscience were linked in any way.
 The poem explores the relationship between sexuality and love,
and comes to the conclusion that the two cannot be separated, a
conclusion at variance with the established tradition, from
Petrarch onwards, which emphasises the soul at the expense of
the body, and veers much more towards the neo-Platonic view
that only the visions of the soul are worthy of consideration.
 For further discussion on Shakespeare's use of the word
'conscience' in Henry VIII and elsewhere an article by Dr. T.
Merriam is especially recommended. Use the link below to view
it.

21. SONNET 152
In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn,
But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing;
In act thy bed-vow broke, and new faith torn,
In vowing new hate after new love bearing:
But why of two oaths' breach do I accuse thee,
When I break twenty? I am perjured most;
For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee,
And all my honest faith in thee is lost:
For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness,
Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy;
And, to enlighten thee, gave eyes to blindness,
Or made them swear against the thing they see;
For I have sworn thee fair; more perjured eye,
To swear against the truth so foul a lie!

22. Analysis
 This concluding sonnet in the sequence to the dark
lady fills the reader with a sense of unease. This is
probably because, knowing that it is the last one, we
expect a resolution in some way, a farewell sonnet, or
a renunciation of bondage, or a hope that the love he
has found, for all its imperfections, will live on
forever, growing and maturing as the two grow older,
or more infatuated, or more knowing. But no such
denouement is to be found. We are left with the
uncertainty of unknowing, and a resolution that is
solved only by irresolution.

23. Analysis
 The language of this sonnet, more than any other, leans
heavily on the language of the law courts - 'Do you solemnly
swear that the evidence you will give will be the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth?'.
(for)sworn is used 4 times; swear(ing) 3 times; oaths 4
times; vow(s) twice; perjuredtwice; truth twice; faith twice;
and honest and constancy are also to be found. It seems as if
the writer is setting up for trial, in the court of posterity, the
justification for his love, a justification which he undermines
at every turn. He cannot find the words or reasons that will
sanction this love, yet he will not abandon it, and if it is a lie
against the truth, then so be it, for love must sometimes
break the mould of the predictable world around us and
enrich our lives with the tawdry and imperfect, rather than
provide us with the ideal and cold beauty which is the
subject of our endless and futile searching.

24. Conclusion:
William Shakespeare is a man of imaginative sensibility with great
humanitarian soul. He is the master of art and many writers of later time
followed him in their writing. In fine, he has gained much popularity in the
world because of his outstanding contribution to English language and
literature. He has coined more than three thousand words in English
language and has written Tragedy, Comedy and Tragi-comedy with a large
number of Sonnets. This name William Shakespeare has become immortal
for interest of human nature in the world. No other dramatist has been
gained such popularity in the world what he has achieved.

25. Thank you