What Is The Mood Of The Poem Sonnet 147 By William Shakespeare

Sonnet 147 wrote by William Shakespeare is a love sonnet, or that is what it is perceived as in the beginning. This Sonnet is written from the perspective of a poet who expresses the love he holds for his mistress (and lover) as a sickness, and more specifically, as a fever. This sonnet has 14 lines, which are then broken up into 3 quatrains and a rhyming couplet for the finish. There is a rhyming scheme in this sonnet, every second line rhyme, until the couple where they both rhyme to finish (ABABCDCDEFEFGG). This sonnet is an iambic pentameter. The thought of love tends to be happy and bright time, but he makes his love seem dark and almost as though it is a pain. The first stanza the author lets the readers know that he is infected by …show more content…
“Angry that his prescriptions are not kept” (Shakespeare,6). He is saying that the doctor is angry that his directions are not kept. He is not listening to reason, so even his reasons are failing him. There is no doctor telling him what to do, it is his mind. Right now, all the poet is thinking about is the lust, not what this mistress is doing to his body. So, the “love doctor” is helping him see realize the mistake he is making. This is another metaphor Shakespeare once again puts into this sonnet. The poet seems to not care what others think of the decisions he is making around his mistress. It is almost like he is blinded by love or lust. In line 4 when he writes, “Desire is death, which physic did, except” (Shakespeare, 8). He starts this by saying that the lust he is constantly craving for is going to end up killing him. Then goes into saying “physic did except”. Physic in this time means reason and except meant to exclude. The poet is saying that reason does not approve of this statement. Reason would have given him a cure and prevented death. When using the word, desire, he emphasizes on the fact that he is taking about lust rather than …show more content…
There was a use of a personification in line 5, “My reason, the physician to my love”. There was simile used in the first and last lines of the sonnet. Shakespeare may have did that on purpose to start and finish this piece strong. There were many themes provoked throughout this sonnet. The theme of sex, love, and madness are the main ones. These themes were shown throughout the sonnet many times. In line 9 there is a double stressor. Shakespeare does this on purpose as this is when the mood of the sonnet begins to change. He stresses, past, I, now, reason, is. This changes the way the poem is read, and that is what Shakespeare wanted. The final line is a dark and aggressive way to finish off a piece about