Uncourtly Love In Shakespeare's “Dark Lady” Sonnets

Section: Research Paper
Published
Mar 1, 2007
Pages
67-92

Abstract

Shakespeare's sonnet sequence consists of 154 sonnets. It is unanimously divided into two parts. The first part (sonnets 1-126) is addressed to a young man, the second (sonnets 127-154) to a dark lady. The sonnets of the first part deal with such traditional themes as love, beauty, fear of time, fear of death, immortality of beauty through poetry, and survival in spite of the cruelty of time and death, some of which overlap and are related to the major theme of love in one way or another. The type of love explored in the whole sequence is unsatisfied. "Neither of the poet's loves", Michael Alexander writes, "can be satisfied: the worship of the young man, because he is a man; the love of a woman because it is lust",(1). This paper claims that the love the sonnets of the second part express is of uncoventional nature, i.e. it is physical, uncourlty love or lust. It is beyond the scope of such a short paper to discuss all the twenty-eight sonnets that are about or addressed to the dark lady. Hence only those sonnets which are as representative of the theme of love as possible have been selected for discussion. They are sonnets 127-135. 137, 144, 147, 151 and 153-154.Sonnet 127. the opening sonnet of the second part which is related

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How to Cite

Kadawy, T. (2007). Uncourtly Love In Shakespeare’s “Dark Lady” Sonnets. Adab Al-Rafidayn, 37(45), 67–92. https://doi.org/10.33899/radab.2007.34109