Sonnet 116 vs Even Tho

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Sonnet 116 and Even Tho Sonnet 116 is about love, not between a particular couple, but as a concept. The poem explores what is meant by love, and says that, if it is true, love is one of life's constants and it doesn’t change with time or circumstance. Whereas Even Tho explores the sensual side of love and it also captures the idea of carnival. Even Tho says that you should have fun without being overcome or ‘devoured’ it is a slight contrast to Sonnet 116 as Nichols states that important to be individual whereas Sonnet 116 says we should stay together forever. Sonnet 116 uses repeated pairs of words: "love is not love", "alters when it alteration finds" and "remover to remove" this is a mini parallel structure. This mirroring of words is also suggestive of a loving couple, as they come in twos. As well as pairs of words, there are some negatives and opposites used to emphasise the qualities of love by saying what it isn’t. Even Tho also uses repeated words, ‘brace-up’ ‘hug-up’ ‘sweet one another up’ but for a different effect, Nichols is showing; through rhythm and rhyme, how physical the relationship is. The structure is both poems is quite different, Sonnet 116 is the typical Shakespearean Sonnet consisting of 14 lines divided into three stanzas of four lines each and a final couplet (two lines.) The rhyme scheme can be described as a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g. Even Tho hasn’t got a rhyme scheme as such but it’s set into a couplet, three quatrains, one triplet and finally another couplet. Like Sonnet 116 the poem ends with a couplet, Shakespeare does this to really justify how serious he is; ‘If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.’ Nichols also does this to emphasise her point, the break between the stanzas signifies a break in their relationship, and is a space for reflection on their dangerous and ‘devouring’

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