Sonnet 91 Tone

In "Sonnet 91" by William Shakespeare the poem raises the question of the value of love, which is answered through Shakespeare's play on words and the narrator's own preferences of his kind of love. This poem captivates the reader's interest and causes them to understand how love is different from wealth or possessions. William Shakespeare in "Sonnet 91" uses metaphors and tone variety to exemplify the vulnerability of love when it is placed first above all else in life.

Shakespeare uses literary devices throughout the poem to express its deeper meaning beyond the concrete definition of words. The poem's initial sardonic tone is clear when the narrator states the term "a new tangilled ill" (Shakespeare "Sonnet 91") in line 3, effectively …show more content…
The apparent admiration in the previous quatrain allows the narrator to realize the power that his lover has over him, causing the narrator to feel vulnerable (Lambdin R. T. "Excerpt from Sonnet 91"). The narrator then admits that this vulnerability makes him "wretched" (Shakespeare "Sonnet 91") , and he realizes that his lover can take what he desires most, herself, causing him to feel more "wretched" (Shakespeare "Sonnet 91"). The last couplets initial quatrains illustrate the irony of love when the narrator states "Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take All this away, and me most wretched make" (Shakespeare, "Sonnet 91"), meaning that a person is "wretched" while in love and also wretched out of love (Lambdin R.T. "Excerpt from Sonnet 91"). Love is a comparison to the attributes that the narrator lists in the initial quatrains; because these are possessions that people have control over, and can only be taken through neglect or bad decisions (Lambdin "Excerpts from Sonnet 91"). However, this is not the way that love works, and the final couplet of the sonnet demonstrates this vulnerability of someone who "succumbs to love" (Lambdin R.T. "Excerpts from Sonnet 91") and the lover is at the mercy of his