Love or hate William Shakespeare, you must admit he could write some powerful sentences.
I will be the first to admit I sometimes get lost in his overzealous attempts of descriptive language. However, from time to time when reading pieces of his literature you will stumble upon sentences or even stanzas of absolute brilliance.
For example, one of my personal favorites by Shakespeare taken from Sonnet #18, better known as "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day.":
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Plain and simple, this stanza gives voice to his heart. Bill obviously wrote this with great love, either something he was feeling personally or his interpretation of someone else's love. I like this poem, but I love this ending. The idea that you love someone so much, that you wish to immortalize them through a poem.
6 comments:
An interesting side note: Shakespeare wrote this earlier in his life, when he was still pretty young. It's fun to compare to Sonnet 130-something he wrote when he'd had a little more life experience.
I just wish I could get away with making up my own words like he did.
I took Shakespeare English 382 With Dr. Burton and the class was great. What Shakespeare did for the English language is unbelievable and it's incredible that we hardly know anything about his personal life.
But did he really write all that stuff or was he just a cover for another writer of equal or more talent?
I like your points. There definitely is beauty in the way words are used to compose a poem and Shakespeare knew what he was doing. I still think to myself though, did most of his writings have to be so complex? what was going through his mind when he would write "I'm going to make this as confusing as possible so only those who study it extensively know what I really meant." then when he writes something like this poem where most educated people understand it with just a little contemplation "I guess I can have pity on some so they will want to read my other work."
just between you and me, sonnet 18 (and all of the other sonnets 1-126 were written for a "fair youth"...a dude. so we can wonder no longer at whether he was expressing his own or another's feelings. they were his. he even whines about the dude not being a chick in #20. very unfortunate. generally, Henry Wriothesley is credited as the addressee of the sonnets, but we may never know for sure!
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