The ministry of higher and secondary special education of the republic of uzbekistan termiz state university the faculty of foreign philology the department

2. Shakespeare’s treatment of Love
The themes of marriage and love are two leading issues in Shakespeare’s sonnets drama. The 154 sonnets, which are divided into two groups, treat these two themes from various perspectives. In the treatment of marriage and love Shakespeare is both traditional and anti-traditional. He is traditional in the sense that like other Petrarchan sonneteers of his age, Shakespeare also gave emphasis on love theme in his sonnets. Sometimes, he also follows the courtly tradition. But he is also different from the Petrarchan sonneteers in the sense that he openly satirizes the courtly tradition of poetry in his sonnets. Now,let us discuss Shakespeare’s treatment of marriage and love in his sonnets.⁵
Shakespeare’s opening 17 sonnets, which are known as the procreation sonnets, deal with the theme of marriage. Here in these sonnets Shakespeare is preoccupied with the practical value of marriage. He does not treat marriage from spiritual point of view. Rather he views marriage as a tool to overcome the destruction of Time.In the opening four sonnets, Shakespeare urges his friend to get wed in order to preserve the ’beauty’s rose’ from the hands of destructive Time. The poet calls upon his friend to get married and to produce children in order to be able to perpetuate his name and his memory.
In Sonnet 5, 6 and 7, the poet views marriage as a tool to defy the ravages of Time. Here he gives a picture of the passing of time and the effect of time on beautiful things. When summer ends, all its beauty goes, without leaving any trace behind. Samely people gaze at the sun and worship its glory when it rises in the morning. But nobody bothers about the sun when it is setting. Here the poet encourages his friend to have ten sons if possible because that will mean ten times more happiness for him and for others. 
Shakespeare also considers marriage important for happy conjugal life. In Sonnet 8, the poet employs a new argument that music chides his friend for remaining single instead of getting married. Various musical sounds combine to form one harmonious whole. In the same way a father, a mother, and a child constitute one pleasing whole (i.e, a family).The poet’s feeling behind this sonnet is one of the regret at the failure of his friend to have played that role.
In Sonnet 9, we have a striking example of what is known as ’’hyperbole.” To say that the world will be widowed if the poet’s friend dies issuless.
In Sonnet 10, the poet accuses his friend because the friend loves nobody and in fact he does not love even himself because he shows no concern for the preservation and perpetuation of his own beauty through marriage and begetting child.
In Sonnet 11 the poet appeals to his friend in the name of sheer commonsense. There is no doubt that, if everybody were to lead a life of celibacy, the world of human beings would come to an end after a certain period of time.
In Sonnet 15 the poet promises immortality to his friend through his poetry. Yet he urges his friend to seek immortality through a more effective way in Sonnet 16 and 17. The poet is trying to preserve an image of the youth and beauty of his friends in his sonnets, but the coming generation will not believe that such a handsome and charming young man as has been described in these poems ever existed.They will think that the poet has given a highly exaggerated account of his friend’s beauty. So, the best way for his friend to attain immortality, therefore, is to get married and beget a child.
Next comes the treatment of love. In his treatment of love Shakespeare is almost autobiographical. He expresses his views on love in relation with his male friend and the young lady. 
The first group of sonnets is addressed to a male friend, most probably the Earl of Southampton; while the second group is addressed to Shakespeare’s mistress who has come to be known as the dark lady. Shakespeare loved both his male friend and his mistress ; and his love for both of them was intense and passionate. But both of them betrayed him by developing a sexual relationship with each other.Inspite of this betrayal, Shakespeare could not help continuing to love both of them.
Regarding his relation with his young friend, the poet writes in romantic and loving language, a fact which has led several commentators to suggest a relationship between them, while others read it as platonic love.
Shakespeare’s love is ideal love, and it almost surpasses the love of Dante for his Beatrice, and the love of Petrarch for his Laura. Nor could Mrs Browning, in her sonnets, written much later and addressed to her husband, equal Shakespeare’s ardour and fervour.⁶
Shakespeare’s treatment of love is also seen in his relation with the Dark lady. Here at first, the poet is anti-petrarchan in his treatment of love. Shakespeare did not follow the Elizabethan courtly tradition.
Shakespeare’s ridicule of the courtly tradition is best illustrated in his sonnet 130. This sonnet plays an elaborate joke on the conventions of love poetry common to Shakespeare's day.
In the sonnets, Petrarch praises her beauty, her worth, and her perfection using an extraordinary variety of metaphors based largely on natural beauties. In Shakespeare's day, these metaphors had already become cliche (as, indeed, they still are today), but they were still the accepted technique for writing love poetry. The result was that poems tended to make highly idealizing comparisons between nature and the poets' lover that were, if taken literally, completely ridiculous. My mistress' eyes are like the sun; her lips are red as coral; her cheeks are like roses, her breasts are white as snow, her voice is like music, she is a goddess.
In many ways, Shakespeare's sonnets subvert and reverse the conventions of the Petrarchan love sequence: the idealizing love poems, for instance, are written not to a perfect woman but to an admittedly imperfect man, and the love poems to the dark lady are anything but idealizing ("My love is as a fever, longing still / For that which longer nurseth the disease" is hardly a Petrarchan conceit.) Sonnet 130 mocks the typical Petrarchan metaphors by presenting a speaker who seems to take them at face value, and somewhat bemusedly, decides to tell the truth. Your mistress' eyes are like the sun? That's strange--my mistress' eyes aren't at all like the sun. Your mistress' breath smells like perfume? My mistress' breath reeks compared to perfume. In the couplet, then, the speaker shows his full intent, which is to insist that love does not need these conceits in order to be real; and women do not need to look like flowers or the sun in order to be beautiful.
In the case of the mistress, Shakespeare’s attitude is vastly different. Shakespeare’s love for his mistress is wholly sensual. He finds his mistress far more guilty than his male friend. He certainly recognises the physical charms of the woman even though she has a dark complexion. A dark complexion is far from being regarded by most people as beautiful; but there is something irresistible about this woman whose charms reside in her shape, figure, and features. Her dark complexion is, therefore, no obstacle in the way of Shakespeare’s infatuation with her.
But Shakespeare’s love in this case can only be described as an infatuation which he cannot overcome. Shakespeare does not find in her those virtues which the traditional heroine of the Elizabethan and pre-Elizabethan sonneteers possessed. On the contrary, Shakespeare finds this woman as being a nymphomaniac who would be ready to sleep with other men, besides Shakespeare’s male friend. Black from the outside, this woman is black inside too. In her case outward appearance and inner reality coincide and, though a symbol of irresistible physical charms, she also becomes a symbol of treachery, foulness, and sensuality. While Shakespeare’s love for his male friend possesses the quality of loftiness, his love for the dark lady shows the degradation of love.
Thus, the themes of marriage and love are central to Shakespearean sonnets. Like the Elizabethan sonneteers he used these two themes in his sonnets. But his treatment is different from other sonneteers. He views marriage as an important element to perpetuate beauty. And he expresses love not only in his relation with a lady, but also in his relation with his male friend.
Shakespeare love sonnets are intensely personal and address the deep issues of life. Love is dealt with most comprehensively. Critics over the centuries have been fascinated by the two main subjects of the love sentiments – the ‘fair young man’ and the ‘dark lady.’ Scholars have explored the Elizabethan times and Shakespeare’s sonnets to try and identify these two figures and there are several theories, although there is some consensus around the identity of the young man. He seems to have been the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare’s patron between 1592 and 1595.
It is natural for the imagination to roam over these two living, breathing figures, who Shakespeare knew so intimately, but it is just as interesting to look at the whole body of sonnets to see what insights Shakespeare offers us about the role of love in life.As usual, through personal messages, humour, observations of the everyday, and so on, Shakespeare reaches depths in bits of language that have become quotable truths about human life, including love. When we look at in that way we can see descriptions of three different contexts in which love operates. In doing so he depicts a multi-faceted image of love.
Love in Shakespeare’s sonnets does not have a single definition, but rather, an intangible collection of characteristics that, together, make up a powerful force that defeats all obstacles. Taking just three of the sonnets – 116, 130, and 147 – love is depicted as an overwhelming force that triumphs over time, the physical world, and reason, respectively.
In sonnet 116, love is given an identity as an immortal force, which overcomes age, death, and time itself. Love is depicted as an invincible force that defies time as well as time’s effects on beauty and youth, changes such as wrinkles and old age. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks/Within his bending sickle’s compass come (Lines 9 and 10). Love, unlike the physical being, is not subject to decay. In sonnet 130 the force of love is displayed through physical beauty. In that sonnet, Shakespeare expands his definition of love to include an image of love as a force that overcomes social pressures.⁷ In sonnet 147, the speaker’s reasonable mind is overridden by emotions that arise from his love and desire for his absent partner.
Returning to the fair young man and the dark lady, we see the depiction of different types of personal love. Sonnets 1-126 seem to be addressed to an unnamed male friend, younger than Shakespeare. The intensity of feeling and the language imply a sexual love, but that is to impose our modern perceptions of sexuality on the poems.
Even the most masculine of men were not afraid to express a view of their feelings for other men and admiration of their beauty, unlike the fear modern men have of being thought to be homosexual if they did that. Speculation about Shakespeare’s sexuality is a red herring.
In those sonnets, 1-126, we see a growing friendship with the young man and the development of an intensity of feeling. In sonnets 1-17 Shakespeare seems concerned with the desire to urge the young man to marry and reproduce. Then, as the friendship develops and the poet comes to love the young man intensely, we see feelings of grief caused by the poet’s separation from him.
They live in different worlds: the young man is a nobleman and that, in itself, is cause for a certain kind of separation. Moreover, the young man is idle and wanton, whereas Shakespeare is a hard-working actor, writer, and businessman, and that, too, is a major difference in lifestyle and another level of separation.
However, these sonnets reveal a deep love for the young man, admiration of his exceptional physical beauty, and, perhaps, the payment of dues to a benefactor. Whatever the reasons are, the sonnets provide us with some of the finest expressions of love in the English language.
The Dark Lady in Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Then there is the dark lady, referred to as ‘black.’ Here again, the word is often taken literally to mean black, as in African. But it is likely that she is a non-blonde – perhaps an English brunette or a Mediterranean woman. Some scholars have suggested that she never existed but that Shakespeare invented her to express sexual emotionsranging from intense sexual passion to sexual distaste in sonnets 127-152. It seems that we will never know the truth. The sonnets depict a painful and erotic relationship in which the poet remains attached to his mistress through a combination of love, and even stronger lust.
Whatever the scholarly speculations about the love sonnets are, the fact remains that a reading of them offers the most comprehensive and universal treatment of love in the English language.
Shakespeare uses the word “Time” seventy-eight times in the sonnets from 1 to 126. The poet is disappointed that he has no control over as the time entails mortality, memory, inevitability and change. But the poet is hopeful due to his verse and tries to conquer the time. At times it seems that the speaker is fighting a futile battle against time as: “And every fair from fair sometimes declines’ By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed Shakespeare often personifies time. It is said that Time is the fourth character in his sonnets. But the time is the great villain in Shakespeare’s sonnets-drama. He describes time as a “bloody tyrant”, “devouring” and “swift-footed”. Time is making Shakespeare old and near “hideous night” or death.
And time will eventually rob the beauty of the young friend and noble patron. This treatment of time is prevalent throughout the sonnets, and it takes many different forms, sometimes referring to the destructive power of time in general, other times focusing on the effects of time on a specific character in the sonnets such as the narrator or the fair lord.”8 The same power of Time has been manifested in the poem “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell who says that he can hear the sound of the chariot-wheels of approaching of death or time which will take him into a region of infinite and dead silence where everything like beauty, love, vigor and honor etc will be reduced to dust.⁸
“But at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us like lie Desert of vast eternity Thy beauty shall no more be found, Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song: then worms shall try That long preserved virginity: And your quaint honor turns to dust; And into ashes all my lust.” 13 Time has been presented as a great destroyer in Shakespeare sonnets. Time is very strong. It is the greatest enemy of man and nature. Many of his sonnets clearly exhibit the power of time that kills all worldly things. Everything- the youth, beauty of human beings or beauty of natural things comes under the shadow of “bloody tyrant time” In sonnet no.-15, Shakespeare says that Time would change his friend’s day of youth to night which is dark. According to the poet, his poetry is at war with time because of his love for his friend, and that what Time would take from his friend his poetry would restore to his friend. “And all in war with Time for love of you, As he takes from you, I engraft you new.”
Shakespeare affirms that Time is very powerful but have also believes that love is more powerful than time. He foretells that his verse would forever continue to be read and recited and would thus renew the name, fame, beauty and nobility of friend in spite of the cruel hand of time: “And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand, Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.”
The power of time can be seen in the sonnet “Shall I Compare Thee to a summer’s Day” . The sonnet starts with an interrogative sentence. The poet thinks that the beauty of his friend is more pleasant and temperate than summer’s beauty. But here the time hangs on each action, things and events. In the sonnet the poet clearly states the power of time. “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.” Int. J. Eng. Lang. Lit & Trans. And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:” The season of summer is momentary and unpredictable. In summer season, rough winds blow and shake the much-loved buds of May.
The image displays at the most delicate and tender care for the fragility of beauty, not just the beauty of buds. Here the time in form of rough winds destroys the beautiful buds and wins over nature. At times the sun, the eye of heaven, shines very brightly and often it is overcast in the morning. But as the time passes, it is also dimmed of its gold complexion. Therefore, we can see that everything-‘darling buds of May’, ‘summer’s lease’ and ‘golden complexion’ of the sun are subjected to decay in the powerful hands of time. “And every fair from fair sometimes declines; By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed”.
Harsh and strong winds of summer spoil the blossoms of May. Summer’s span is too short. The use of the word ‘lease’ reminds us of the fact that every beautiful thing remains so for a limited period of time only. After some time beauty of things will be forcibly taken away by chance or nature’s changing course. So, here the ‘gold complexion’ of the sun even dims and “every fair from fair sometimes declines.” In the first seventeen sonnets which are called the procreation sonnets, Shakespeare makes an earnest request to his beloved fair lord to find a woman to bear his child so that his beauty might be preserved for posterity. In all these seventeen sonnets, he presents the time as a powerful instrument and force.
He establishes this fact through much imagery like military winter and the sun. In sonnets no. 2, the poet urges his friend to get married and beget a child who would inherit his beauty and keep it alive. If the friend does not marry, the time will snatch his beauty and in due course his traces of beauty will be vanished. “When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field, Thy youth’s proud livery so gazed on now, Will be a tattered weed of small worth held.”
Again in sonnet no.-5, the poet is following the same trait and establishes the supremacy of time. He says that time which operating gently, brings beauty into existence, and performs also as a destroyer of that beauty. So, flowers fade away and lose their beauty in due time. But the beauty of flowers can be preserved by extracting their essence in a liquid form in a glass of wall of glass, i.e-bottle. In sonnet no.-13, the poet, once again, displays that time will overtake the life of man and puts an end to a man’s course of life in this world. “Against the stormy gusts of winter’s day’ And barren rage of death’s eternal cold?” The supremacy of time, once again, is established in sonnet no.-60. The sonnet opens up with a kind of understanding of the Renaissance idea of the power time possesses-“Like as waves make towards the pebbled shore, so do our minutes hasten to their end.
This sonnet,” Like as the waves….” is resonant with the poet’s presentation of the devastating power of time to change the phenomenal world and its beauty. The time tramples under its foot everything of the world. The time is armed with a scythe that cuts down everything in a merciless manner. The cruel hand of time allows nothing to stand against “his scythe to mow”. “Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth, And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow; Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth, And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.” Sonnet no. 60 is considered as one of Shakespeare’s masterpiece because it displays the universal fact that time is creator as well as destroyer.
Every minute of our lives, we are close to our end that is our ultimate destination. In the sonnet, time is symbolized by concrete images. “Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore’ Int. J. Eng. Lang. Lit & Trans. So do our minutes hasten to their end, Each changing place with that, which goes before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend.” It seems that the poet is inspired by SPENSER’S “One Day Wrote Her Name” where he says that time as a sea waves come and wash away the mortal things even the name of his lady-love written on the seabeach. Nothing stands permanent before the time.
One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washed it away: Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide and made my pains his pray.” In sonnet no.-64, Shakespeare is very disappointed to see the damaged and dilapidated monuments and tombs of famous people. Those tombs and monuments have suffered heavily damage with due course of time. Even the hungry ocean devours the sea land and brass monuments is subjected to decay by the destructive fury of death. The poet is afraid to loss his friend also because nothing stands permanent before time or death. “Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate, That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death which cannot choose But weep to have, that which it fears to lose.” Shakespeare also inter-related the old age and death in line of theme of time. He believes that the old age will have ruinous effect even on his friend’s beauty and charm. He assumes that his face which was most “gracious” in the past, will be “beated and chopt with tanned centiquity.” The poet says that his friend will be crushed by time’s “injurious hand” and his friend’s brow will be filled with “lines and wrinkles.” In the sonnets no. 65 the poet also says that nothing withstands time’s ravages. Even brass status and memorials, marble tombs and other monuments are subjected to decay and even extinction. Nor is the boundless sea exempted from the ravages of time and rocks and steel gates are not too strong to withstand the destructive blow of time. “Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o’ersways their power.⁹
The time also has ruinous effect on the personal life of the poet. As the time passes, he became old. The poet speaks sorrowfully to his fair noble lord friend that one day he will be an old man. It is as if he will be in the autumn of life. Autumn is the season of sadness and desolation. The sight of autumnal decay reminds the poet of the ruined cathedrals where once the priests, choirs and birds used to visit and sing as well as performed the church services. So, the time will snatch beauty, strength and music from his life. He will be in twilight of his life that comes after the sunset and gradually loses himself in the darkness of the night, death’s second self.