The idea of love in john donne and shakespeare - Essay Example

It is like a little song that states a problem, explores the implications and resolves the dilemma. In many ways, Shakespeare’s and Donne’s poetry are familiar but have contrasts as well. This paper will focus on the idea of love as portrayed by the two in their sonnets (Blair, 2005). Shakespeare’s sonnets are divided in three groups as they address three different people while Donne’s are divided in two parts; the witty love and religious merit. Shakespeare’s sonnet 130 shows how he makes fun at the courtly conventions during those days.

This love sonnet mocks how other people think of love but it does not undermine his mistress’s beauty. While other people compare the lips to coral, in the sonnet he says that “coral is far more red than her lips”. Shakespeare says she would love her even if her breast were ‘dun’. In his love sonnets, Shakespeare writes for a wider audience and tries to convince them to see things from his perspective. Shakespeare uses a different language to express love, for instance he quotes “if hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head”.

In love poems, many poets will make the hair look soft, long and probably golden (Shakespeare and Booth, 2000). In a love sonnet, the reader will not expect a language like black wires on the head or ‘dun’ breasts. . Shakespeare uses a dark lady to depict beauty and love which is the opposite of renaissance love poetry. This interprets love to be an internal force that have power even over the external forces such as looks. According to Shakespeare, love is more than the looks, material things and romance (Martin, 2010).

In sonnet 73, Shakespeare seems to be the speaker, and is pleading for love to grow stronger. He uses a soothing and humble tone in this sonnet. In sonnet 116, the ideal love according to Shakespeare is the kind that perseveres and does not wear with time. He states “love is not love, which alters when its alterations finds”. When a love relationship is broken, it is accompanied by heartaches and in his opinion; love can also hurt, as written in sonnet 147 (Shakespeare & Booth, 2000). Looking at Donne’s second sonnet ‘song’, speaker uses impossible actions and fantastic language to show love.

For example, “Teach me to hear mermaids sing”. His emotions and how he feels about love can be strongly felt through his poetry. His sonnet, ‘the canonization’ talks about two lovers whose love cannot be understood by anyone else (Donne & Redpath, 2009). Donne seems to tackle the ideal love from his experiences in life. He had eloped with his underage love Anne, and it is not clear whether this poem portrayed how his father and the society failed to understand and objected their marriage.

Despite the hardship, the couple loved each other deeply. In this sonnet, nobody believed that these lovers should be allowed to be and that is why they talk ridiculously behind their back. This is a metaphor to show that they will talk and ridicule them but they will long to have a deep love just as theirs (Donne, & Stringer, 2005).