Similarities and Differences Between Edna and Shakespeare's "love Poem"

Edna versus Shakespeare's Tuafoe 1

Similarities and Differences between Edna and Shakespeare's "Love Poem"

Name: Suluo'o Tuafoe

Instructor: Mr. Hollis

Course: ENG 125

Date: 08/28/2012

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William Shakespeare was born to John Shakespeare and mother Mary Arden some time in late April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. There is no record of his birth, but his baptism was recorded by the church, thus his birthday is assumed to be the 23 of April. His father was a prominent and prosperous alderman in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, and was later granted a coat of arms by the College of Heralds. All that is known of Shakespeare's youth is that he presumably attended the Stratford Grammar School, and did not proceed to Oxford or Cambridge. The next record we have of him is his marriage to Anne Hathaway in 1582. The next year she bore a daughter for him, Susanna, followed by the twins Judith and Hamnet two years later. Seven years later Shakespeare is recognized as an actor, poet and playwright, when a rival playwright, Robert Greene, refers to him as "an upstart crow" in A Groatsworth of Wit. In 1599, the troupe lost the lease of the theater where they performed called: The Theater, they were wealthy enough to build their own theater across the Thames, south of London, which they called "The Globe." The new theater opened in July of 1599, built from the timbers of The Theater, with the motto "Totus mundus agit histrionem" A whole world of players. When James I came to the throne in 1603 the troupe was designated by the new king as the King's Men or King's Company. The Letters Patent of the company specifically charged Shakespeare and eight others "freely to use and exercise the art and faculty of playing Comedies, Tragedies, Histories, Interludes, Morals, Pastorals, stage plays as well for recreation of our loving subjects as for our solace and pleasure." He entertained the King and the people for another ten years until June 19, 1613 and he passed away in the year of 1616 on the day of his 52nd birthday.

Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in February 22, 1892 and died in October 19, 1950. She was an American lyrical poet, playwright and feminist. She received the Pulitzer price for poetry in 1923 the third woman to win the award for poetry, and was also known for her activism and her many love affairs. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work. The poet Richard Wilbur asserted,

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"She wrote some of the best sonnets of the century." Millay was born in Rockland Maine, to Cora Lounella, a nurse, and Henry Tollman Millay, a schoolteacher who would later become a superintendent of schools. Her middle name derives from St. Vincent Hospital in New York, where her uncle's life had been saved just before her birth. The family's house was "between the mountains and the sea where baskets of apples and drying herbs on the porch mingled their scents with those of the neighboring pine woods." In 1904, Cora officially divorced Millay's father for financial irresponsibility, but they had already been separated for some years. Cora and her three daughters, Edna who called herself "Vincent", Norma, and Kathleen, moved from town to town, living in poverty. Cora traveled with a trunk full of classic literature, including Shakespeare and Milton, which she read to her children. The family settled in a small house on the property of Cora's aunt in Camden and Maine, where Millay would write the first of the poems that would bring her literary fame. In this paper, I'll be be comparing and contrasting the two poems that was written by these two famous poet named: Edna St. Vincent and William Shakespeare. These two love poems really brings my attention into reading books and wanted to read more poems by these two poets.

Edna St. Vincent Millay's "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where and Why" is an effective short poem, which feeds on the dissonance between the ideal of love and its reality, heartbreak. In William Shakespeare's "Let Me Not to The Marriage of True Minds," the effectiveness is weakened by its idealistic and metaphysical stereotype. In contrast to Millay, Shakespeare paints a genuine portrait of what love should be but unfortunately never really is. This factor is what makes his poem difficult to relate to, thus weakening the effect on the reader. These poems were published quite far apart from each other, three-hundred and fourteen years to be exact, which might explain the shift in idealism. Though both circumnavigate the concept of love, the effect left within both writers based on personal affairs dramatically differentiates the persons of both speakers.

In Millay's poem "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where and Why she laments

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over lost lovers. Ironically, she is described as both fondly remembering and regretfully forgetting them. In the second and third lines, the speaker recalls the lips and arms, of the young men, that have embraced her in the past, rather than their faces, suggesting her ignorance of their identities or names. She continues, "the rain is full of ghosts tonight." In this octave she uses raindrops hitting a windowpane to stand for the sighs of lost lovers. She also compares raindrops to ghosts as a metaphor for memories of lost lovers, whose absence she feels, though who have faded into a vague abyss. In this comparison, she also uses the windowpane to show the separation between the present and past, or a border which allows insight but not interference. She is able to look back at her past but not change anything she has done thus she can only reminisce and unfortunately only regret. She describes "a quiet pain" in her heart "for unremembered lads" emphasizing her loneliness and sorrow caused by these meaningless trysts. In the sestet Millay compares herself to a "lonely tree," "with birds vanishing one by one" and "boughs more silent than before." The tree is an analogy for her lost chances at true love. The lack of leaves and singing birds on the boughs