Shakespeare\'s Sonnets the Feeling of Being Loved

Shakespeare's Sonnets

The feeling of being loved is probably the headiest ego massage of them all! Indeed, there is no experience quite like being loved to the extent that one has the power to make someone forget almost everything else in life. Viewed from this perspective, it would appear that the man portrayed by William Shakespeare in his Sonnet #29, "When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes," would be a more exciting lifetime partner than the man characterized in Sonnet #130, "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun." However, I believe that love alone is not enough to meet life's challenges, which requires strength of character, maturity, and a willingness to shoulder responsibility. Therefore, I believe that the man in Sonnet #130 would be a better lifetime partner since it is evident that he is mature and wise enough to recognize that love for another should not be based on deceptive romantic images or flattery.

In Sonnet #29, Shakespeare's speaker describes his anguished state of mind over his current decline in fortunes but then goes on to wax eloquent about how just the memory of his loved one has the power to uplift his mood. As he says, "Haply I think on thee, and then my state / Like to the lark at break of day arising / From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate." The speaker's dramatic reversal of mood is made all the more significant in the light of his earlier confessed envy of people who he feels have been blessed with good looks, friends, talent, and intellect. Indeed, he sums up his lonely, tormented frame of mind by stating that he despises himself because he is not even contented with what he enjoys the most. Yet, his memories of his love have such power that he concludes by saying that he would not change his "state' even with a king. Thus, Sonnet #29 is a poem about the power that love has to comfort even the most depressed of souls.

A man who values a woman's love above everything else in his life is perhaps the stuff that women's dreams are made of. Shakespeare's characterization of the speaker in Sonnet #29 is representative of exactly such a man. To that extent, it is most tempting to choose him as the better lifetime partner. However, on deeper reflection, it would seem that there is ample reason to doubt the strength of character of a man who seems to blame the heavens and fate for his misfortune with no attempt to introspect about his role, if any, in bringing about such a state of affairs. Even presuming that it was pure bad luck that led the speaker into being "disgraced with Fortune and men's eyes," I would imagine that someone with strength and maturity would determine as to how he could overcome his current set of adverse circumstances and emerge the stronger for it! In fact, the speaker's laments in Sonnet #29 remind me of a couple of men who have grown to be burdens on their wives. For, just like Shakespeare's speaker, they spend all their time feeling sorry for themselves instead of using whatever talent they may have to make something of themselves and their lives. True, they possess a deep and abiding love for their women but the fact remains that such love, by itself, is not enough in meeting the inevitable responsibilities and challenges that must be faced in life.

In comparison, Sonnet #130 is more in the genre of realism considering that the speaker analyzes how his love falls short of all the conventional romantic images of beauty and grace. Indeed, 12 out of the 14 lines in the sonnet describe how the poet's love is nothing like the romantic images that are typically woven around loved ones. To cite just one example, the speaker in the poem says, "I have seen roses demasked, red and white, / But no such roses see I in her cheeks." Indeed, it is only at the tail end that the speaker declares his love for his mistress and, in fact, pays her the tribute of saying. "And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare / As any she, belied with false compare." Thus, the sonnet concludes by the speaker declaring that he loves his mistress for the unique individual she is and that she can match any woman whose image has been built up with false romantic imagery.