A Comparison of Romantic Love in Shakespeares Sonnets & As You Like It

Shakespeares Sonnets & Romantic Love in As You like It Shakespeares frivolity As You equivalent It is clearly a pastoral comedy with a country setting, a theme revolving around love and a story which consists of a serial of accidental meetings between characters and a village involving transformations of characters and divine intervention. The comedy involves the traditional literary device of moving urban characters into the country where they have to deal with life in a diametric manner. Whereas the pastoral comedy was usually a vehicle for satire on corrupted urban values, in this play the satire appears to be direct at the convention of Petrarchan love.(Rosenblum, 86) Renaissance conventions of love were strongly influenced by the luxuriant system of love called the Petrarchan tradition. An Italian poet, Francesco Petrarch, wrote a cycle of sonnets to his beloved Laura, which became internationally popular. In his poetry, Petrarch professes his undying love, and laments her cruelty for not returning his passionate devotion. He also describes the inspiration for his love - a single glance from her eyes. In the course of his sonnets, Petrarch and Laura never meet or speak. She may not tied(p) know he exists. Midway through the sonnet sequence Laura dies. Petrarch continues to applaud and mourn her in verse years after her death. His lyric poetry, meant to be read and not performed, is the first form for the self in conflict. position Renaissance poets admired and imitated Petrarch. He centered his sonnets on a series of themes Love, Chastity, Death, Fame, Time and Eternity. Petrarch established the basic form of the Italian sonnet as fourteen lines divided into two clear parts, an opening o... ...rold.Shakespeare The Invention of the Human.New York Riverhead Books, 1998. Booth, Stephen, (ed).Shakespeares Sonnets,New oasis Yale University Press, 2000. Dolan, Frances E (ed).William Shakespeare As You Like It, New York Penguin Books, 2000. Garbe r, Marjorie. The Education of Orlando. In Comedies from Shakespeare to Sheridan, Newark Univ of Delaware Press, 1986. Hodges, Devon. contour as Comedy. In Renaissance Fictions of Anatomy, pp50-67. Amherst Univ of Massachusetts Press, 1985. Mowat, Barbara A. and Paul Werstine (ed.s) As You Like It by William Shakespeare, New York Pocket Books, 1997. Moulton, Charles Wells,(ed) The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors Vol.1 (680-1638), New York Peter Smith, 1935. Rosenblum, Joseph. A Readers Guide to Shakespeare, Barnes & Noble Books, 1997.