Commentary Of Sonnet 144

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This poem is written by one of the greatest poets and dramatists of all time, William Shakespeare and is among one of his popular sonnets which describes the interwoven relationship between comfort (personified as the young man) and despair (personified as the woman) in Shakespeare. The battle is between heaven and hell, between the spirit and the body, and the body seems to triumph over the spirit. Poet examines his ambiguity: he prefers to be guided by his "better angel" who is "right fair," but he is tempted too often by a "worser spirit." This ambiguity continually presents a universal challenge for the human condition. A sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines that follows a strict rhyme scheme and specific structure.This poem is in the form of a sonnet and has a feminine rhyme. For example “”Two loves I have of comfort and despair, Which like two spirits do suggest me still, The better angel is a man right fair, The worser spirit a woman coloured ill” are the first four lines of the poem and they have two syllable (disyllabic) rhyme consisting of stressed syllable followed by unstressed. The entire sonnet follows the same pattern. The theme of the poem is how evil can take over good through various ways. Personification is used in the poem. “Comfort” is personified as the youth and “Despair” as the woman. The rhyme scheme of the poem is abab, cdcd, efef,gg. The poet's mood is cynical and mocking, because uncertainty about the relationship torments him. The youth, being the right and fair is often taken over by the evilness of the woman. Shakespeare clearly favours the beautiful, both physically and spiritually, honest, gentleness of the youth over that of the lady, and he places all the blame for the youth’s deviation from his path of righteousness squarely on the shoulders of the lady. Shakespeare's depiction of them as angels, one good and one bad, shows
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