Representation of Romantic Love in Shakespeare and Browning's Works

1499 Words6 Pages
Sonnet 18, one of Shakespeare’s most famous sonnets, has its first line competitive with Shakespeare’s line "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” Sonnet 130, also created by Shakespeare, is a pleasure to read purely for its simplicity and bluntness of expression. It is also one of the few sonnets that show Shakespeare write humorously. Porphyria’s Lover, which was first published in 1836, is Robert Browning’s most shocking and dramatic monologues. The dramatic monologue is a fictional speech, which captures a moment right after a main event. As for When We Two Parted, a poem by Lord Byron, (George Gordon Byron) published in 1813, is a poem of a heart break, conveying strong feelings and emotion simplistically, but full of meaningful vocabulary. What the first three poems share in common, is that the theme of love is described visually and they all share negative and positive language. However, there are aspects of the poems that differentiate each poem. Sonnet 18 and Sonnet 130 are almost opposites of each other, and have the same number of lines; fourteen; both written in the Tudor time and Porphyria’s Lover is a dramatic monologue, written in the Victorian period. The poems overall are about love, though they are explored in different ways; which is shown via the poets attitudes towards their lovers. The poet in Sonnet 18, describes his lover’s appearance beauty as perfect and everlasting; in Sonnet 130, the poet shows that his lover isn’t beautiful at all, but he still loves her purely for who she is; and as for Porphyria’s Lover, the poet describes his lover as beautiful, (similar to Sonnet 18) but shows madness towards his lover, as he kills her, and shows love to her corpse. The three poems includes a strong rhyming scheme; Sonnet 18, and Sonnet 130, both share the same rhyming scheme, which is, ababcdcdefefgg. Where as Porphriya’s Lover ccontains an
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