Analysis of "The Course of True Love Never Did Run Smooth", Comparison between Sonnet 18 and Sonnet 65

 

{A Midsummer Night's Dream 

  As You Like It 

  The Tempest}

                   -William Shakespeare                                                      

Question: 01) “The course of true love never did run smooth,” says Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. How is  this realization also applicable in all the love relations as depicted in the three plays.

                                              Answer to the Quest. No: 01

             Love is a recurrent, perhaps the most dominant theme in the canon of Shakespeare’s notable works. In his plays, he mixes courtly love, unrequited love, compassionate love, and sexual love with skill and heart. In the Elizabethan era, the sense of love was reduced to mere appetite, political power, and social convenience. Love was bounded by tradition, not by passion at that time. This theme is at the heart of Shakespeare’s plays, for example, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, The Tempest, Twelfth Night etcetera. The plots of these plays feature one, two, three and even four pairs of lovers. Good and healthy relationships that end in marriage are used as a symbol of happiness and harmony. But in the comedies, too, true lovers have to face hindrance to reach the goal of making their love successful. They have to cross a thorny, complex, and ambiguous path and this create a slight tragic sense in the comedies. Shakespeare has examined the taboos that obstruct the lovers from building a ‘Temple of love’. Several factors can be regarded as obstacle on the way of love, for instance, “difference in blood” as we have seen in Hamlet, “mismatch in respect of years” in Othello, “war”, “death”, “sickness”- all these things can separate the lovers forever.

         In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hermia’s father Egeus approaches Duke Theseus with the demand that Hermia must marry Demetrius instead of Lysander as Demetrius has Egeus’s consent. He says, “As she is mine, I may dispose of her, / Either to this gentleman or to death”. Demetrius loves the idea of marriage to Hermia but not Hermia, herself. Egeus refuses to honour the union of Hermia and Lysander although Lysander loves Hermia devotedly. Despite Hermia’s clear confession that she does not want to marry Demetrius, Egeus considers Hermia as a “helpless doll” in his hand and negotiates an arranged marriage with Demetrius. Lysander understands very well that his true love must endure impediments and so he makes this remark, “The course of true love never did run smooth.” Still, Lysander is willing to live with his beloved to make their love successful and decides to elope to the woodland where Athenian law cannot “pursue” them. We can see this courageous step of Lysander through the lens of Romeo’s speech in Romeo and Juliet. Romeo says, “With love’s light wings did I o’erpreach these walls, /For stony limits cannot hold love out, /And what love can do, that dares love attempt, /Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to me.” The true love of Lysander and Hermia is obstructed again because of the changeability of human nature when Puck mistakenly rubs the love juice on Lysander’s eyes. He addresses Hermia as “raven” and wants to change his love for the “dove” Helena. He says, “Not Hermia but Helena I love”. As soon as the love potion is removed from his eyes, he marries Hermia without any complaint and his love for Hermia is as bounteous as the boundless sea.

            In As You Like It, Great Bard’s “gallant hero” Orlando has “tripped the wrestler’s heels and Rosalind’s heart, both in an instant.” Both of them fall in love at first sight, but then they become separated and cannot continue their relationship because Duke Frederick banishes Rosalind. Orlando, too, has to escape to save his life from the conspiracy of Oliver. In the forest, Orlando cannot help but vandalizes the tress with the testaments of his love for Rosalind. Rosalind is an “absent presence’’ to him. He compares Rosalind with Helen, Lucretia, Cleopetra and says, “From the east to western Ind, /No jewel is like Rosalind.” Rosalind is also glad to see Orlando’s pure devotion to her. However, she challenges his impractical equation of Rosalind with Platonic ideal and takes the responsibility of teaching him the practical way of expressing love in disguise of Ganymede. At the end of the play, all the relationships end in sensible marriage.

           Lastly, The Tempest also sets an example of true romantic love between Ferdinand and Miranda and this couple has also gone through some barriers in the course of love. Prospero’s conjuration of a shipwreck brings Ferdinand on the island. Miranda has never seen such a “noble’’ and “brave” human being in her life before. Ferdinand also thinks that Miranda is “so perfect” and “so peerless”. Thus, both of them fall in love at first sight. Ferdinand quickly proposes Miranda saying, “I’ll make you the Queen of Naples.” But Prospero wants to test whether Ferdinand’s love for Miranda is authentic or he is just prompted by lust. So, he addresses Ferdinand “usurper,” “impostor” and wants to “manacle his neck and feet together.” Prospero imposes some labor-intensive tasks on Ferdinand to check his love. But Ferdinand’s love is so pure that he overcomes every test. He says, “This my mean task, /Would be as heavy to me as odius, but, /The mistress which I serve makes my labors pleasures.” Miranda is unable to see toil-stricken Ferdinand anymore and says, “I’ll bear your logs the while, /Pray give me that.”  Ferdinand’s genuine love resists him to let Miranda do that. He says, “I had rather crack my sinews, break my back, /Than you should such dishonor undergo.” Seeing this loving and sacred relationship, Prospero recognizes their love and hands over Miranda to Ferdinand by saying, “For I have given you here a third of my own life, /Or that for which I live.”  

       To recapitulate, it can be said that all the couples meet a happy and successful ending although they have suffered pain a lot. But their patience and genuineness have brought them success. Shakespeare, too, urges the lovers to be strong in front of problems and keep faith in love. He says in Sonnet 116,

                                      “Admit impediments. Love is not love

                                         Which alters when it alteration finds.’’

 

 

 

 

                                            

 

 

Question:02) Compare sonnets 18 and 65 in order to develope this argument that life is short, art is long.

                                            Answer to the Quest. No: 02

            In addition to 37 plays and 2 long poems, Shakespeare has written a total of 154 sonnets. Among the 154 sonnets, sonnets 1-126 are dedicated to the ‘Fair Youth’ and the rest are addressed to the ‘Dark Lady’. The sonnets written by Great Bard are strongly in opposition to the conventional pattern of Petrarchan love where a despairing lover praises his beloved in terms of worshipful adoration. Moreover, Shakespeare’s sonnets contrast with Spenser’s “Amoretti”, Sidney’s “Astrophil and Stella” and Petrarch’s “Canzoniere” because he criticizes Petrarchan love as archaic as well as occasionally hyperbolic and this type of love is usually doomed to the machinations of life. In some critics’ view, the sonnets are the very summit of Shakespeare’s achievement. Harvard Professor Helen Vendler wrote in “The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets,” “No poet has ever found more linguistic forms by which to replicate human responses than Shakespeare in the sonnets."

           The most celebrated lines of Shakespeare’s sonnets can be found in Sonnet 18. In this sonnet, the speaker starts with praising the loveliness of his beloved. He asks a rhetorical question to his beloved whether he should compare his beloved to a summary day. The speaker makes some significant remarks on his beloved’s beauty. He confidently says, “Thou art more lovely and temperate.” Nevertheless, he also focuses on the brevity of life and nature. He knows very well that “the darling buds of May” will be shaken by “rough winds” and the “gold complexion” of “the eye of heaven” might become dimmed one day. He says, “Every fair from fair sometimes declines.”  The similar notion can be seen in Sonnet 65 where it is said that “brass,” “stone,” “earth,”  “boundless sea,” “gates of steel” everything is at the mercy of time. The speaker lets out a long sigh of despair thinking that “beauty’s action is no stronger than a flower” and he asks out of despondency, “How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea?” The transience of beauty echoes the lines of Sonnet 106. In this sonnet, the speaker says, “Though rosy lips and cheeks, /Within his bending sickle’s compass come.” Here, we can mention Macbeth’s sententious remark on life. Macbeth says, “You strut about and stress on the stage but all those passions indeed, everything you do in life is meaningless at the end of that you just disappear.” According to Hamlet, “A man’s life is no more than to say "one."  

             But the speaker comes up with a hopeful notion in the ninth line of both Sonnet 18   and Sonnet 65. Through the second quatrains of both of the sonnets, he expresses his hearty wish to immortalize his beloved’s beauty. Physical beauty may be demolished by the “wreckful siege” of Time and death that is hidden in “Time’s chest.” But “the eternal lines” of his poetry have the power to resist “the swift foot” of death. According to the speaker, “That in black ink my love may still shine bright”. We can see the eternity of art through the lens of John Keats’s poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Time is stagnant in the artistic life of the urn and the fear of death cannot rob anyone’s happiness. Keats says,

                                              “Bold lover, never, never, canst thou kiss,

                                                Yet do not grieve,

                                                She cannot fade,

                                               For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair.”

           Similarly, the speaker will make his beloved ever-admiring by writing verses and generations after generations will get a chance to know about the luminosity of his beloved. That’s why, he says, “So long as men can breathe and eyes can see, /So long lives this and this gives life to thee.”