William Shakespeare - the bard of love

Recently, we have been studying William Shakespeare in our English classes and I must say that it has been one of my favourite courses so far. I have always admired Shakespeare and the fact that his work is still such a huge part of society 500 years later. My dream is to study Shakespeare when at university, so this little preview of what I am in for really just made me look forward to university even more.

I think reading Shakespeare has taught me quite a lot. It has definitely taught and showed me that I am happy I was not around 500 years ago given the fact that his sentences and words are all tangled up together. But I guess that is the beauty of it, isn’t it? That he was able to convey such strong messages through rather simple sentences – at least simple for his time. One of the messages, I am thinking about, is the message being conveyed in his Sonnet 18 – without a doubt his most famous sonnet.

The lyric speaker compares the woman to a summer’s day – a simile. In the first lines, he compares the woman to the summer and he sort of gives a negative view of summer. Summer eventually ends. The sun sometimes shines too hot and every beauty falls into decay. He is describing why comparing a woman to a summer’s day does not work and expressing that “thy eternal summer shall not fade” and that this woman will be forever beautiful. This he conveys by writing: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee”. The “this”, he is mentioning, is the lines of the sonnet.

I think that that is such a beautiful way to end a sonnet – to express that in his eyes this woman will be forever beautiful because eyes will always be able to see – it sort of just boosts one’s confidence, doesn’t it?

I really think there are a lot of things, we can learn from Shakespeare that we have not learned yet. I mean, there are still movies being made with his plays as the plot – I believe that says quite a lot. I know that I will keep reading his work and try to understand whatever message he is trying to convey. I think Shakespeare is showing us something important – why we live like we do. And I for one would like to know why I live like I do.