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Sonnet XVIII (Shall I compare thee…)

It can be divided into two parts: lines 1-8 concerning nature and its laws; lines 9-14 concerning art and its symbolic order. In the sonnet, the speaker asks whether he should compare the young man to a summer's day, but notes that the young man has qualities that surpass a summer's day. He also notes the qualities of a summer day are subject to change and will eventually diminish. The speaker then states that the young man will live forever in the lines of the poem, as long as it can be read. There is an irony being expressed in this sonnet: it is not the actual young man who will be eternalized, but the description of him contained in the poem, and the poem contains scant or no description of the young man, but instead contains vivid and lasting descriptions of a summer day; which the young man is supposed to outlive. It is a typical Shakespearean sonnet, having 14 lines of iambic pentameter: three quatrains followed by a couplet.

It also has the characteristic rhyme scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.

Sonnet XXX (When to the sessions): It deals with the poet's depression over the youth's separation. It uses alliteration, rhyme and assonance. The narrator spends time remembering and reflecting on sad memories of a dear friend. He grieves of his shortcomings and failures, while also remembering happier memories. The narrator uses legal metaphors throughout the sonnet to describe the sadness that he feels as he reflects on his life. Then in the final couplet, the narrator changes his tone about the failures, as if the losses are now merely gains for himself.

Sonnet LXXIII (That time of year): The images suggested by this sonnet indicate impending death. In the first quatrain the poet compares himself to autumn leaves, but he cannot establish their exact number, just as he cannot determine how close he is to death. In the second quatrain death is closer to the poet, who imagines it as "black night" and then

as sleep.

Sonnet XXVII (Weary with toil) : In this sonnet the weary poet cannot find rest. He goes to bed weary after working hard, which is the "toil" of line one, and the "travail" of line two. As soon as he lies down, another journey begins in his thoughts ("To work my mind") — the destination is the young man, who is far from where the poet is ("from far where I abide"). The poet's thoughts take that journey, and though he sees nothing but the darkness of night, his imagination presents to him an image of the young man, an image that seems to hang before him in the dark, like a jewel. This vision makes the "black night" beautiful — the word "black" is equated with ugliness and "night" has a feminine aspect. The reader is led to expect this vision to improve the poet's lot, but the final couplet suggests that it only adds to the restless misery of the weary poet, and "no quiet" can the poet

Sonnet CXXIX (The expense of spirit): This sonnet considers the emotional experience of the act of physical love as it progresses in time: first the anticipation of lust, then the consummation, followed by the complete shift in mood of the aftermath. The sonnet in spirit resembles a passionate dramatic monologue, and seems to be expressed by a man who looks back at such an act of love with bitter fury at its contrasting aspects. The sonnet begins with a howl of disgust, as the poet condemns the experience, listing negative aspects of lust in anticipation: It can cause a man to be dishonest, brutal, shameful, savage, and cruel. The moment lust is satisfied, it is despised the way a fish might despise the bait it has swallowed. The poem ends with the couplet pointing out that though all men are aware that love in action may provide pleasure, it ends with a deep wretchedness; but still they can't resist. This sonnet is one of the most impersonal.

Sonnet CXXX (The mistress's):

This sonnet, dedicated to the “Dark Lady”, is composed of 14 lines in iambic pentameter: each line has ten syllables, with alternating unstressed and stressed syllables. It follows the rhyme scheme ABABCDCDEFEFGG.

In the sonnet, the author talks about the woman he loves, in an ironical way. Shakespeare’s purpose is to overturn the conventional idea of love and beauty that was represented by the Italian literary movement of “Dolce Stilnovo”, which main representative was Petrarca. These poets idealized the figure of the woman, and they represented her as an angel, a mystical creature. In his poem, Shakespeare chooses not to idealize his mistress; on the contrary he satirises the conventional love sonnet. In fact, he repudiates Petrarca’s style, so we could consider this poem as a parody. Shakespeare criticizes the tendency of Elizabethan poems to compare the beloved woman with the beauties of nature. In fact, she is not described as the perfect

woman:the description does not follow the criteria of beauty of that time. First of all, the Dark Lady is enveloped in an aura of mystery, since we only know the colour of her hair. The writer does not give the reader a full description of her face but he focuses his attention on how his senses perceive her as a human being, as we can see in the lines 13-14 (“I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground”). He compares his lover's body to a series of beautiful things, implying that she is less beautiful than the sun, snow, roses, that she is not as beautiful as a goddess. The comparisons apparently create a negative impression of the beloved, but the poem's final two lines offer us a different interpretation: the comparisons are not meant to be degrading to the speaker's mistress or to the love that they share. The writer's aim is to highlight the woman's humanity: she is not perfect, she is not conventionally beautiful,

"large cost" lavished on a bodyQ3which will shortly die. Continuing his financial metaphor, he urges the soul to turn the body's inevitableCloss into the soul's gain. Thus as death feeds on men, the soul can feed on death, rendering the soulimmortal.

"The Tempest" : It is a difficult play to categorize. Although it ends in a wedding and thus might be definedas a comedy, there are many serious undertones that diminish the comedic tone. Most of the modernanthologies list this play as a romance. With "The Tempest", Shakespeare turns to fantasy and magic as away to explore romantic love, hatred and the love of a father for his child.

Historical context: In the 17th century, the threat of the "Black Death" (plague) was diminishing, but itcontinued to be a seasonal problem in London, which was overcrowded and suffered from poor sanitationand poverty. The city became an important centre of trade. There was more wealth, and the rich could

Now, afford to escape the city. There was a need for large country estates, so more and more farm land was enclosed. As the city flourished, there was a resulting nostalgia for the loss of country life, so England's poets began to compose poetry recalling the rustic life.

There is little plot in "The Tempest". There is a love story, then the story of two brothers who covet their older brothers' titles and possessions, and finally the story of Caliban's plot to murder Prospero. The play is about the complexities of human nature and about reminding the audience that the division between happiness and tragedy is always fragile and must be maintained.

In his "Poetics", Aristotle argued that "unity of action" was essential for dramatic structure. This meant that a dramatic work should have a clear beginning, middle and end. The "unity of time" is derived from Aristotle's argument that all the action should occur within one day.

The "unity of place" is a Renaissance idea, which held that the location of the play should be limited to one place. These unities added verisimilitude and made it easier for the audience to believe the events. Shakespeare rarely used the three unities, but we can find them in "The Tempest" and in "The Comedy of Errors". All the events occur on an island and within a three-hour period. Shakespeare needed the three unities to add coherence to the plot.

Although it is one of Shakespeare's shortest plays, it maintains the division into 5 acts:

1. The first act is "Exposition", in which the playwright sets the problem and introduces the main characters. It establishes the nature of Antonio's betrayal of Prospero, and it explains how Prospero and Miranda came to live on the island. This act opens with a violent storm, which establishes the extent of Prospero's power.
2. It is the "Complication", in which the