Essay: Shakespeare’s sonnet 18/Spenser’s sonnet 75 (poetic techniques, form, theme)

In this essay the two poems that will be discussed; William Shakespeare’s sonnet 18 and Edmund Spenser’s sonnet 75 respectively will be compared with respect to their poetic techniques and form as well as the underlying thesis of Love which is prominent within both pieces. In order to show this comparison, both sonnets will be analysed separately and then compared to highlight both similarities and differences in conjunction to the essay of Love found in Bennett and Royle’s ‘An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory’. This will assess the argument that both pieces are written with the idea of immortalising love and that a sonnet form is the most effective way to portray the idea.
A key point to highlight first off is that both pieces analysed are sonnets, Spenser’s sonnet predating Shakespeare but still following a similar pattern to a Shakespearean sonnet. This means that both pieces can be considered Shakespearean sonnets for this analysis. A sonnet is defined as a 14-line poem of rhyming iambic pentameter within Rhian William’s ‘The Poetry Toolkit’. As William’s also states in her book relating directly to sonnets, “[it] is linked especially with love poetry and many influential sequences […] use the customs of courtly love.” (Williams 2013: 93) This relates directly to Bennet and Royle’s essay on love with it being said, “[…] Talking about what cannot be said, about the ineffable, about what is ‘beyond words’, can prove to be an especially effective way to of talking about love.” (Bennet and Royle 2016: 239) This description of love in poetry links directly into the sonnet form, the love poem.
Shakespeare’s sonnet 18 is renowned for being the poem of love. The way this is achieved is by comparing the lover in question to varying degrees of weather, a common instance in sonnets of comparing the subject to nature. The piece follows the basic Shakespearean rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG with an iambic pentameter metre following throughout. The main premise of the sonnet is the poet telling their lover that their life and beauty will never die as long as the words of the poem are read, therefore relating back to the immortalising of love that both pieces aim to achieve. The poem does not always follow an iambic pentameter. In line 3 for example, the line starts with a spondee ‘Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,’ This emphasises the sudden change in weather from the first two lines by placing more of an emphasis on the roughness of the weather in comparison to the summer season previously described. The poem also starts with a rhetorical question and this is further amplified by the stress on the first word ‘Shall’. The reason for this stress is because the line itself is a question, where it not the line may be interpreted differently by placing less stress on the opening word. The piece also uses various literary devices in order to achieve its goal. The imagery of summer is used to portray love, with summer having positive connotations of peace and happiness. This is further shown in line 9 with “But thy eternal summer shall not fade,” further highlighting the immortality of love by saying that their love will never die and will be forever. It can be determined that this poem was fully intended as a love piece, with so much effort placed into the structure and form as well as the wording. This is further justified with William’s work on sonnets “[…] often thought of as elaborate, intricately arranged pieces of poetry, and a poet might choose them in order to set particularly pressurizing, and so potentially strengthening, restrictions on their expression.” (Williams 2013: 93). The use of repetition with the phrases “fair from fair” and the assonance with words such as “hot” and “heaven” further show the degree of intricacy placed into this poem to fully portray the emotion of love to this person. As well as this, the idea of speaking from the heart is prominent in the first 12 lines with a lack of any caesura. This absence of pausing between the lines gives the impression of true, deepfelt words that require no thought which adds to the theme of love.
Moving on to Spenser’s sonnet 75 and this poem also follows the same Shakespearean sonnet form with iambic pentameter and a slight variation in rhyme scheme with it following the basis of ABAB BCBC CDCD EE. The premise behind this piece is also of immortalising love and preserving the idea of a loved one. In the opening two lines “One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washed it away:”