Two loves I have of comfort and despair. An examination of the addressees in Shakespeare's sonnets

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature grade: 13 Ruhr-University of Bochum (Englisches Seminar) course: Elizabethan poetry language: English abstract: Two loves I have of comfort and despair - for somebody who is familiar with that kind of poetry this beginning of Shakespeare's sonnet 144 should be striking for at least two reasons: 1) For one thing it is the fact that the lyrical speaker talks of two loved ones. Usually sonnets praise one beloved person (or concept such as love itself) which the speakers love with all their heart but which they cannot reach for one reason or another. 2) The emotions the lyrical speaker has towards those loves are quite strange: comfort and despair. Typically the predominant if not the only feeling the speakers of such love poetry have is love without any further requests regrets or conditions under which they love especially without such biased concepts as comfort and despair. Hopefully it becomes clear that this Shakespearean sonnet is far from being typical of the genre at least as far as the treatment of the addressee is concerned.However this peculiarity is not only limited to this poem but it permeates all of Shakespeare's sonnets which are an outstanding example of the development and changes taking place within that genre. And this is also the reason why in this paper I will be concerned with Shakespeare's addressees in his sonnets pointing to striking attitudes the speaker has towards his addressees hinting at the development of the relations and also outlining the Elizabethan sonnet tradition. [...]