Exploring Themes in Sonnets - 1751 Words

The six poems that I shall be comparing are: Sonnet 116, My last duchess, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, The highwayman, The laboratory and The ballad of Tam Lin. There is a common theme that runs through all of these poems of relationships and the love in them whether it be the love lost between two lovers such as in the Laboratory or a fantasy love such as in The ballad of Tam Lin. In La Belle Dame Sans Merci the speaker of the poem comes across a knight all alone and who is apparently dying in a field. He proceeds to ask the poor knight about the awful fate that has befallen him. The knight’s reply takes up the rest of the poem; he says that one day he met a beautiful faery in the fields. He spent the whole day with her making her flower†¦show more content†¦My Last Duchess is a dramatic monologue where in the Duke of Ferrara is negotiating with an emissary for the hand of the counts daughter. During the negotiations the duke takes the man upstairs to see his gallery which includes a portrait of his late wife which is kept behind a curtain only he can draw. The duke goes on to explain to the man that it was painted by Frà   Pandolf and the circumstances in which it was painted. He believed that his wife was having an affair with the painter as she used to smile and blush when around him and even showed him her wrist. Her actions put the duke i nto a demented rage which forced him to give command that â€Å"all smiles stopped together† meaning that he probably had his first wife killed. After telling this story to the family of his bride to be they leave with the duke pointing out some other pieces on the way. The structure of this poem is one long stanza consisting of 56 lines; the rhyming structure is quite basic and made up of rhyming couplets (A-A-B-B). The rhythm is an iambic pentameter meaning that it is consisted of five iambs. There are some images in My Last Duchess that are quite shocking such as â€Å"all smiles stopped together† where you know that he has killed her and can almost see the smile falling from her face. The tone is quite arrogant and the duke says his lines with self-importance and a pretentiousness that is characteristic of someone with money and power â€Å"as if she ranked my gift of aShow MoreRelated Exploring the Theme of Love in Sonnets 57 and 58 Essay1317 Words   |  6 Pages Shakespeare’s sonnets are numbered in a sequential order and adjacent sonnets often have similar content. Throughout Shakespeare’s sonnets, he covers many subjects, such as interest in the life of a young man, his love for a young man, and his love for a dark haired woman. In sonnets 57 and 58, Shakespeare discusses how love is like slavery in its different manifestations. The object of the narrator’s love has a dominating power over the narrator, which controls him and guides his actions. 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Sonnet 116 presents a real, romantic and everlasting love, as the poem explores the meaning of love in its most ideal form. This is