This poem is written by one of the greatest poets and dramatists of all time, William Shakespeare and is among one of his popular sonnets which describes the interwoven relationship between comfort (personified as the young man) and despair (personified as the woman) in Shakespeare. The battle is between heaven and hell, between the spirit and the body, and the body seems to triumph over the spirit. Poet examines his ambiguity: he prefers to be guided by his "better angel" who is "right fair," but he is tempted too often by a "worser spirit." This ambiguity continually presents a universal challenge for the human condition.
A sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines that follows a strict rhyme scheme and specific structure.This poem is in the form of a sonnet and has a feminine rhyme. For example Two loves I have of comfort and despair, Which like two spirits do suggest me still, The better angel is a man right fair, The worser spirit a woman coloured ill are the first four lines of the poem and they have two syllable (disyllabic) rhyme consisting of stressed syllable followed by unstressed. The entire sonnet follows the same pattern. The theme of the poem is how evil can take over good through various ways. Personification is used in the poem. Comfort is personified as the youth and Despair as the woman. The rhyme scheme of the poem is abab, cdcd, efef,gg. The poet's mood is cynical and mocking, because uncertainty about the relationship torments him.
The youth, being the right and fair is often taken over by the evilness of the woman. Shakespeare clearly favours the beautiful, both physically and spiritually, honest, gentleness of the youth over that of the lady, and he places all the blame for the youths deviation from his path of righteousness squarely on the shoulders of the lady. Shakespeare's depiction of them as angels, one good and one bad, shows the unique roles they played in Shakespeare life that influences him.
In the first quatrain of the sonnet Two loves I have of comfort and despair The poet says that there are two loves residing in his consciousness. This can be related to the famous German poet/playwright, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who created a similar situation for his Faust, who uttered the word, Zwei Seelen, ach!, wohnen in meinem Brust, (Two spirits, alas, reside in my heart.) Shakespeare thus realizes his better nature that would bring him comfort is often overruled by the worser spirit that brings him despair.He considers the better nature to be masculine and the worser one feminine. These distinctions do not refer to human gender; they refer to principles that correspond to the pairs of opposites. The problem is inherent to human beings, who have to solve it the same way through transcendence of the physical and mental to arrive at the spiritual. Thus the better nature is right fair, while the worse is coloured ill. Symbolically, the young man and the woman represent two kinds of love battling for supremacy within the poet's own character: selfless adoration and shameful lust, respectively. Comfort and despair are also theological terms, harmonizing with the theological idioms of the poem.
In the second Quatrain of the sonnet: To win me soon to hell, my female evil- the female evil, if he continues to follow it, will lead him to hell, because it makes him ignore his better angel. The female evil will result him to lose his focus from his path of truth, honesty and good values and lead him in a direction of darkness. Therefore instead of becoming a saint, he will be a devil. The foul pride will overtake his purity, if he allows it to happen.
In the third Quatrain of the sonnet: And whether that my angel be turnd fiend both urges live in the poet, he cannot be sure how he will keep the evil urge from overtaking the good one. Perhaps his angel will be turned fiend, but since they both live in him it is a dilemma to avoid either one. Here the evil(woman) is dominant and hence there is a chance of it overtaking the good(man) side of him.
There is also a couplet in the sonnet : Yet this shall I neer know, but live in doubt because the poet suspects he will never be able to pacify the two parts of his psyche, he will live in doubt, but maybe the bad angel will become so dominant that the good one will be ultimately overcome and extinguished. The poet fears that he will be uninformed when he loses his good one in the shadow of the bad one.
The poets greatest fear, one that he cannot face, is that the young man is subject to the woman's insidious advances: "And whether that my angel be turned fiend / Suspect I may, yet not directly tell." Unfortunately for the poet, what the outcome of this struggle will be is uncertain: Till my bad angel fire my good one out. In the last line of the sonnet: Till my bad angel fire my good out , there is a cluster of ideas implied. Fire suggests the flames of hell and the triumph of evil over good. The bad angel appears to force the good one out in to the open, as if he had been hiding somewhere. It also suggests that she might drive him away when she is sated with him. Ironically, the uncertainty about the fate of the relationship between the young man and the woman is the only certainty the poet has.
It is seen that the young man and the Dark Lady are introduced as a good spirit and a bad spirit. He also discusses about the conflicting ideas that works in his mind. His confusion puts him into a doubt on how he can retain the purity in him being aware of the fact that the worser spirit is more dominant than the better one. Also, the device of Psychomachia is introduced, in which personified Virtues and Vices attempt to influence the overall behavior of the central character- Shakespeare.
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