Shakespeare and Wordsworth on Love, Nature, and Human Experience

Introduction: Two Poets, One Continuum

Two hundred years and a vast chasm of experiential differences separate two of England's greatest poets. And yet, the unabashedly Romantic overtones of their respective works suggest a telling continuity between William Shakespeare and William Wordsworth. A consideration of their respective talents in the mode of poetry demonstrates that, for both, honest attention to human emotion distinguishes their works as universal and timeless. Such is the case with Shakespeare's 1609 Sonnet 116 and with Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," first released to the public in 1807. The latter is widely considered to be among Wordsworth's loveliest and most accurate demonstrations of his poetic aims. The former is a prominently known piece from a larger collection, often singled out for its stark and concise evaluation of love.

Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 and the Power of True Love

To consider Shakespeare's poem first: the reader's attention is drawn immediately to its focus on the notion of true love — an entity which the speaker considers so powerful that he subjects it to personification. This is a device, in fact, which ties together the two works considered throughout this discussion. For Shakespeare, personification serves as a way to construct love as a knowing force, compelled by its beholders yet governed by a higher awareness that "is an ever-fixed mark / That looks on tempests and is never shaken."

Shakespeare evokes here some of the themes that eventually find their way into the philosophy of the Romantics. Indeed, he is often seen as the towering figure to whom all Romantic poets paid literary homage. In this particular sonnet, there is a probing interest in better understanding the way that love relates to the human experience. More specifically, Shakespeare evokes suffering in the form of a "tempest" and touches on mortality in describing "the edge of doom," addressing themes of great importance to introspective Romantic writers. This very influence is apparent in the selected work of William Wordsworth.

Wordsworth's Romantic Vision of Nature

Wordsworth was one of the leading catalysts for the Romantic age of literature, in which poets and prose writers used their craft to provide evocative considerations of the natural world and of the human condition within it. In many ways a spiritual counterpoint to the thrust toward industrialization and modernity that dominated the nineteenth century, the Romantic movement trained its focus on the relationship between humanity and the natural world. Quite to this point, the Wordsworth poem in question is driven by this theme and appeals to such devices as personification, which is also evident in Shakespeare's selected work. Just as Shakespeare gives human attributes to an abstract entity such as love, so does Wordsworth go to particular and recurrent lengths to suggest the human attributes of a tremendous expanse of daffodils lining a lakeshore.

Personification as a Shared Poetic Device

In "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," Wordsworth calls the daffodils a "crowd" and describes them as dancing. He portrays them as moving in "glee," as might only a throng of people. In the second stanza, Wordsworth writes that the daffodils "stretched in a never-ending line / Along the margin of a bay: / Ten thousand saw I at a glance, / Tossing their heads in sprightly dance." This image of a sea of daffodils "tossing their heads" truly conjures the impression of kinetic and chromatically stunning movement, invoking the sense of some euphoric human celebration.

There is yet another dimension of the Wordsworth poem that distinguishes it as emblematic of the Romantic era. It is worth noting that this literary movement was not solely concerned with describing nature and capturing its beauty in words. More than that, Romantic poets such as Wordsworth were perpetually preoccupied with the notion that humanity was alienated from nature and that it was incumbent upon each person to reconnect for the sake of spiritual wholeness. It is here that Wordsworth's piece takes on an added dimension — not just giving human attributes to a natural landscape, but conversely assigning elemental attributes to the human observer. The opening lines report: "I wandered lonely as a cloud / That floats on high o'er vales and hills / When all at once I saw a crowd, / A host, of golden daffodils." Here, it is as if the speaker has become ensconced in the natural surroundings as another interwoven element, while the daffodils stand apart for their beautiful conspicuousness.

That the speaker views himself as less conspicuous underscores the Romantic perspective that eschewed the arrogant view of industrial man as master of nature's domain. As a passive observer — the cloud — Wordsworth approaches nature as something of which he is inherently and humbly a part. For their beauty, he seems to imply, the daffodils can be forgiven for being less humble.

Conclusion: The Human Experience in Poetry

The two poems seem to be of one mind where the human experience is concerned. For both, the experience observed in nature is ultimately a function of human perception and human perspective. Both poets reinforce this notion by returning to the primacy of the speaker's role within nature. Wordsworth, for his part, withdraws from the immersion implied by his stroll on the lakeshore and, the reader may presume, returns to his everyday life in the modern world. It is here that he reports: "For oft, when on my couch I lie / In vacant or in pensive mood, / They flash upon that inward eye / Which is the bliss of solitude."

Though Wordsworth has once again assumed his place apart from the natural world, he denotes that it is valuable to return to this beautiful space in memory when in need of emotional or psychological respite. Ultimately, this reinforces the Romantic imperative of distilling the human experience within its context. For Wordsworth, the context of modernity invokes a greater appreciation for humanity's inextricable bond to the natural world.

For Shakespeare, a pre-Romantic prerogative toward leaving one's own stamp on the world seems to drive the perspective of Sonnet 116. This is evidenced by his closing lines, which state rather definitively: "If this be error and upon me proved, / I never writ, nor no man ever loved." Both in the way Shakespeare characterizes the everlasting nature of true love and in the way he references his own role as a writer, his concern is decidedly more strident than that of Wordsworth. Still, the two pieces ultimately appear as different points on the same continuum, probing humanity's identity as it relates to forces greater than itself — nature, society, and time. Indeed, a preoccupation for poets and readers alike, both Shakespeare and Wordsworth demonstrate a compelling desire to document the human experience before mortality claims them.

Works Cited

Shakespeare, W. (1609). Sonnet 116. Shakespeare-Online.com.

Wordsworth, W. (1807). I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud. Poem Hunter.