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

1.Shakespeare's Sonnets Themes
In poems there are 3 more popular theme concepts that writers used to express a point. These three themes being Love, Death, and Time. The theme Love can be interpreted in various ways and can be linked to Time and Death. For example, the love for time and how important it is to a specific person/thing or how love can lead to death of someone or something. Around the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century men usually wrote poems dealing with love between two people. These two people either loving each other or how their love has disappeared. Within these poems writers sometimes uses aspects of nature or the world to drive their point. William Shakespeare was a master at incorporating love in his sonnets. I will discuss the theme concept of Love in "Sonnet 18", "Sonnet 116", and "Sonnet 109."¹ .
In the "Sonnet 18" the speaker uses love in a sense of a person describing the long lasting beauty in another person, perhaps their significant other. The speaker uses descriptions of nature and images in order to show the beauty of this particular person. In the first quatrain he begins his comparison between this person and nature by comparing them to a summer day. In the second line, "Thou art lovely and more temperate", he is saying that this person is lovelier and gentler than a summer day (Shakespeare). A summer day usually has the implications of something being beautiful and fitting. He continues on to talk about certain features of a typical summer day. "Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines and often is his gold complexion dimmed;" (Shakespeare). This quote explains how nature is not always perfect by saying the sun is sometimes too hot and often times the clouds cover to sky causing that gold complexion to be dimmed. He later explains that this person beauty will never go away, characterized as them being an "eternal summer" (Shakespeare).
The first 126 sonnets in Shakespeare's sonnets are said to constitute a cycle, having controlling themes and a narrative progression that implies a dramatic plot of sorts. We do not know for certain that the order in which the first 126 sonnets were first printed (and are still printed) is the order that Shakespeare himself conceived. Yet there is indirect evidence to indicate that Shakespeare was consciously following the sonnet cycle model of earlier poets (including Sidney), so that certain themes and implied dramatic situations unite sections of the Sonnets and then give way to other motifs and narrative circumstances.
The first seventeen poems of Shakespeare's sonnets express the speaker's unqualified love for a young man whose youthful beauty is praised in exquisite lyrics. In these opening pieces, the speaker (or poet) entreats his friend to marry and to have children so that his extraordinary beauty will be perpetuated. Starting with the famous Sonnet 18, the poet begins to speak of the corrosive effects of time upon youthful beauty and of his beloved's need to have his beauty immortalized in the poet's own verse. At this juncture in the cycle, several of the sonnets imply that the poet's beloved has either left him for another or that the poet's affection has not been returned by the young man. It is of (possible) significance that in Sonnet 40 et seq. the young man is accused of having stolen the poet's own (and presumably female) lover, who may be the Dark Lady of Sonnets 127 through 154.
As the bonds of affection between the poet and his love object undergo dramatic and thematic qualifications, so too does the poet's initial assurance that his poetry can immortalize the beauty of his beloved. Thus, in Sonnet 65 ("Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea") the speaker concludes that his words (written in black ink) might endure and keep his feelings toward his beloved from evaporating under the grinding power of time. In several of these middle sonnets, the poet acknowledges the problems of his love for the young man but also suggests that the understandable cooling of his beloved's ardor can be rekindled. In Sonnet 73 ("That time of year thou mayst in me behold"), for example, the poet anticipates that his beloved will notice that he is growing older and that he is now in the autumnal stage of life. Rather than assume that the young man will be repulsed by ongoing decay and the sense that the speaker's death is drawing nearer, the poet proclaims that this should spur his lover to embrace him more fully and urgently.
The complications of rival lovers and of time in several of the sonnets of the 18 to 77 number range yield to another concern in Sonnets 78 through 86. In this sub-group, the poet waxes jealous over his speculation that his beloved young man has found another poet (a George Chapman, for example) to render his beauty into words for the ages. Literary historians have interpreted this group of sonnets to be an expression of the poet's (i.e., Shakespeare's) disturbance at a shift in the largesse of one of his patrons toward another writer. Another theme with an autobiographical resonance surfaces in Sonnets 110, 111, and 112. In these three poems, the speaker speaks of his worry that the young man has turned from him because of public display, the poet allowing that he has gone to the theater, appeared as a "motley" on the stage, and this "sold cheap" to the theater-going masses that which is "most dear."
But in the last dozen sonnets of the young man group, the spirit of love without qualification and of a reconciliation between the poet and his beloved is reasserted. Thus, the the final piece in this set, Sonnet 126, returns to the theme of the first seventeen poems—the young man's physical beauty and its immortalization through the verses penned by the poet/speaker.²
The second and far smaller group of poems (Sonnets 127 through 154) are addressed to a different listener, a woman of dark complexion and "purple" sexual mores whom critics have traditionally called the Dark Lady of Shakespeare's sonnets. Sometimes called the "vituperative sonnets," the last 28 sonnets of the standard collection consist of variations on the poet/speaker's complaints about his female lover's infidelity and/or indifference toward him. In several of these poems, the inference is that the Dark Lady addressed is a married woman; the speaker charges her with betraying both the poet and her husband for yet a third lover. More specifically, in Sonnets 133 and 134, the poet voices his suspicion that the Dark Lady has been having (another) extramarital affair with one of the poet's own friends, possibly with the young man of Sonnets 1 through 126. The possible connection of these two Dark Lady sonnets with Sonnets 40, 41, and 42 (in which the speaker charges his beloved male friend of infidelity with a loose woman) is intriguing. It is by no means evident, however, that Shakespeare intended any such plot bridge between the two groups of poems that make up his sonnets.
Human love—in a variety of manifestations—is a principal focus of Shakespeare's sonnets. Commentators have called attention to the many different kinds of love expressed in these verses: spiritual and erotic, parental and filial, love that ennobles and love that corrupts. They point out that these verses explore the paradoxical nature of human passion from different perspectives, sometimes idealizing love and sometimes treating it sardonically. Many critics emphasize Shakespeare's innovative and unique treatment of the traditions of courtly and Petrarchan love. They compare the Renaissance ideal of human love—a relationship in which earthly and heavenly desires are balanced and complementary—with the sonnets' representation of these desires as polar opposites.
In Shakespeare's sonnets, critics have argued, love is sometimes presented as an inspiration for transcendent art, with the lover claiming that he can eternalize his beloved's worth and beauty by enshrining them in his poetry. Thus love and art can unite to triumph over time and its destructive effects. Love in the sonnets is also represented as an impulse that can help a person realize the noblest virtues of human nature: patience, understanding, selflessness, and forgiveness. Yet some commentators maintain that the sonnets' depiction of self-effacing love represents a satire on the servile lover of sonnet tradition, who willingly assumed the role of abject servant and devoted himself to obeying his mistress's every wish. Critics have pointed out that love in the sonnets sometimes manifests itself as infatuation, turning the lover's head and blinding his judgment. It is also represented, particularly in Sonnets 127-52, as lust or carnal desire, a passion that corrodes the soul and debases the lover. Yet as critics point out, some of the Dark Lady sonnets wittily and exuberantly portray sensual love as a vital expression of human nature. Love is also represented as friendship, and some commentators have read the relationship between the Poet and the Friend in terms of the classical notion that an intimate friendship between two men has greater intrinsic value than a sexual relationship between a man and a woman.
Over the centuries, commentators have alternately denied, confronted, accepted, and celebrated the ambiguous eroticism of the sonnets. One seventeenth-century editor changed all the masculine pronouns and adjectives into their feminine counterparts so that the beloved of Sonnets 1-126 became a woman. Eighteenth-and nineteenth-century editors and commentators struggled with the implications of the use of masculine address in the central portion of the sequence. Twentieth-century critics are divided on the issue of whether the relationship between the Poet and the Friend is sexual. But virtually everyone agrees that whatever the nature of that relationship, it sheds no light on the personal life of the author of the sonnets. Stephen Booth's pronouncement on what is termed the biographical fallacy has been frequently cited by other critics: "William Shakespeare was almost certainly homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual. The sonnets provide no evidence on the matter."³
In Shakespeare's sonnets, an important theme associated with love is betrayal of love. Most commentators agree that although the Poet accuses the Dark Lady of sexual infidelity, he is far less concerned about her faithlessness than he is about the Friend's. As critics have noted, the Poet fears that the young man will prove inconstant, yet he tries to suppress his doubts and trust the youth. When the Friend betrays him, the Poet attempts to justify and excuse his infidelity, then reproaches the young man for his deception and himself for believing in the youth. Several commentators remark that the shock of betrayal is intensified because the Poet is convinced that there is a direct symmetry between the young man's outward appearance—his extraordinary beauty—and his inner self; when the Poet realizes there is disparity rather than correspondence, he is desolate. Nevertheless, commentators generally agree that the Poet's love for the young man is sustained to the end—though perhaps it becomes tempered by a more realistic appraisal of his friend's true nature.
Several critics have asserted that narcissism is an important motif related to the principal theme of love. In their judgment, many of these verses underscore the sterility and deceptiveness of self-love and emphasize the belief that "To give away yourself keeps yourself still" (Sonnet 16). This motif is perhaps most evident in the so-called "procreation sonnets" (1-17), where the Poet urges the young man to marry and beget children so that his beauty and virtue will be replicated in succeeding generations of his family. But critics have pointed out that the sonnets equate self-love with barrenness in other ways as well. A narcissistic view of one's natural gifts as personal assets rather than attributes to be shared with others is also sterile: hoarding one's treasures rather than using them is the same as wasting them, for time will ultimately consume them. Moreover, some commentators observe, the sonnets warn that self-love inevitably traps the narcissist into believing what false friends and lovers tell him about himself.
Assessments of narrative elements frequently begin by pointing out that the order in which Shakespeare's sonnets appear in most modern editions follows the one established by Thomas Thorpe in the original publication of these verses in 1609. We do not know if Shakespeare had any hand in this publication, and thus we cannot know if this is the order in which he intended them to be read. Many scholars, believing that a coherent story would emerge if the sonnets were rearranged, have revised the order. However, none of these rearrangements has gained significant acceptance by other critics and commentators.
Countless summaries of the narrative line of Shakespeare's sonnets have appeared in print. These range in length from one sentence to thirty pages or more. Critics generally agree that there are few traces of a traditional plot in the sonnets. Indeed, most commentators remark on the absence of a definable progression of events, specific actions, and indications of time and place. And recently, critics have considered the possibility that some of the sonnets in the first group (1-126) may be addressed to the Dark Lady. Since we cannot be sure to whom many of the sonnets refer, we cannot trace the course of a developing—even if illogical—narrative. Indeed, critics argue, the sequence focuses not on a series of events but on the speaker's thoughts and emotions.
From about the middle of the nineteenth century to the present, Shakespeare's sonnets have frequently been read as a series of dramatic monologues. Thus many commentators describe the sonnets as "dramatic" in that they provide immediate emotional contact between the speaker and his reading audience. Furthermore, some critics view the tensions that the speaker describes between himself and his young friend, and between himself and his mistress, as essentially dramatic in nature. However, some critics argue that the sonnets are nondramatic in that they seem to take place in an eternal present.⁴
The linguistic inventiveness of the sonnets is one of their chief characteristics. Critics have noted that the language is dense and complex, rich in significance, contradictions, overtones, and echoes. They have also remarked that Shakespeare's vocabulary, imagery, and diction are inseparable from the various themes or topics within each poem. Some commentators have argued that the ambiguity of Shakespeare's language is a reflection of his ambivalent attitude toward the subjects of his poetry. Others have evaluated the wide range of tone in the sequence, pointing out the often abrupt shifts from playfulness to derision, intensity to detachment, ecstasy to despair. Studies of the sonnets' elaborate verbal patterns have focused on such elements as alliteration and assonance, syntax, neologisms, punning and other forms of wordplay, as well as Shakespeare's use of paradox and antithesis.
The figurative or metaphorical language of the poems is a chief topic of critical interest. There is widespread agreement that the imagery of Shakespeare's sonnets is functional rather than ornamental. Imagery often serves as a unifying agent between individual sonnets, creating a formal pattern which links together poems that are otherwise discontinuous in logic or topic. Commentators have often remarked on the multiple associations of a single image, arguing that readers should not try to find one meaning—in this rich mixture of connotations—that is more significant than the others. Images drawn from nature appear frequently throughout the sequence, particularly with reference to the passing of the seasons and the cycle of growth and decay. Other important metaphorical patterns are linked to treasure or riches, corruption and disease, scarcity and abundance, and the effectiveness of procreation and poetry as means of immortalizing beauty and defying time.