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

Shakespeares Sonnets & Romantic Love in As You Like It Shakespeares comedy As You Like It is clearly a eclogue comedy with a country setting, a theme revolving around go to sleep and a story which consists of a series of accidental meetings between characters and a resolution involving transformations of characters and divine intervention. The comedy involves the traditional literary device of despicable urban characters into the country where they have to deal with life in a different manner. Whereas the pastoral comedy was usually a vehicle for ridicule on corrupted urban values, in this play the satire appears to be directed at the convention of Petrarchan love.(Rosenblum, 86) Renaissance conventions of love were strongly influenced by the elaborate system of love called the Petrarchan tradition. An Italian poet, Francesco Petrarch, wrote a cycle of sonnets to his making love Laura, which became internationally popular. In his poetry, Petrarch professes his undying love, a nd laments her cruelty for not returning his choleric devotion. He also describes the inspiration for his love - a single glimpse from her eyes. In the course of his sonnets, Petrarch and Laura never meet or speak. She may not even know he exists. Midway through the sonnet eon Laura dies. Petrarch continues to adore and mourn her in verse years after her death. His linguistic process poetry, meant to be read and not performed, is the first form for the self in conflict. English 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 instauration of the Human.New York Riverhead Books, 1998. Booth, Stephen, (ed).Shakespeares Sonnets,New Haven Yale University Press, 2000. Dolan, Frances E (ed).William Shakespeare As You Like It, New York Penguin Book s, 2000. Garber, Marjorie. The Education of Orlando. In Comedies from Shakespeare to Sheridan, Newark Univ of Delaware Press, 1986. Hodges, Devon. Anatomy 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 rebuke of English and American Authors Vol.1 (680-1638), New York Peter Smith, 1935. Rosenblum, Joseph. A Readers Guide to Shakespeare, Barnes & impressive Books, 1997.