Shakespeare’s sonnets remain in time             

-Period:

shakespeare wrote his sonnets between 1592 and 1598, but the manuscript circulated only in 1609. He wrote them when London theatres were closed because of the plague, and so he dedicated to sonnet.writing and to the two non-dramatic works he decicated to his patron.

-Form:

Shakespear wrote 154 sonnets, and all consist in 14 lines structured as three quatrein and a rhyming couplet. The rhyming scheme is abab cdcd efef gg, and this is the typical convention of the form called Shakespearean or Elizabethan’s sonnet. This model is different from the Petrachean’ s model because of the different tone and rhyme of italian and english language. Infact this two language are relly different in rhyme, and so sonneteers had to change the rhyming scheme. The meter used is the jambin pentameter.

-Themes:

The main theme i Shakespeare’s sonnet are:

The different aspects of love, in which he explores the feeling of love. Infact he wants to understand why human beings feel the need to love and he presents two types of love: one follow the courtly love code’s conventions, and another go trught the courtly love code’s convention.

The theme of time, which is portrayed as an enemy of love. Time infact causes beauty to fade, people became old and then they die. Shakespeare, with his poetry wants to give eternal life to the “fair Youth” and to the “dark lady”, and in his sonnet he underlines the contrast between eternity and mortality.

-Images and symbol:

Shakespeare’s builds images and meanings adopting symbols. He somethimes uses words which belong to the semantic field of nature to make a comparison with human beings’s beuty , which is perfect only for a little moment, and then it has to fade. He uses stars, and distances to illustrate beuty subjected to the pass of time and which infuences the human being destiny.