Renaissance Humanism and The Object of Love in Shakespeare

Shakespeare's object of love is a very complicated one. At one hand the author rests upon the Petrarchan tradition, while on the other - he negates it. As a Petrarchan follower he enacts in his work the laws of "courtly love". According to these laws 'the poet is necessarily deep in love with a beautiful and disdainful lady' and in his poems he is supposed to present 'a catalogue of her physical beauties' [2]. The 'catalogue' should be filled with learnt by heart phrases, such as 'coral lips', 'pearly teeth', 'alabaster neck', and etc [2]. The strange thing is that 'the object of love needed not possess these qualities' [2].

But being a true and passionate sonneteer, Shakespeare managed to form in the reader's mind a much more realistic image of

An interesting characteristic of Shakespeare's love is its possibility for growth. "Love is a babe" states the sonneteer in Sonnet 115, which means that love is 'imperfect', i.e. it can grow and develop [1]. But love's growth requires 'an effort on the part of the poet' and also time. Sonnet 116:

Another specific feature of Shakespeare's object of love is the 'lack of exaggerated praise and false compare' - these seem to be the most malicious crime, and they 'enrage him even more than sexual infidelity' [1]. A proof of the poet's rage may be seen in Sonnet 84:

Still, Shakespeare cannot be declared an Anti-Petrarchan. He just rejects both extremes, the one being - praising everything and the other - negating everything. But this does not suggest that his object of love is unworthy of attention, it just gives it an air of genuineness, makes it more refined, as in Sonnet 130:

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

Some topics in this essay:
Charles Darwin's, Literature Sonnets, Unlike Petrarch, Shakespeare's Sonnets, object love, Neuer Imprinted, shakespeare's object love, shakespeare's object, , object love complicated, false compare, sun coral, love complicated, petrarch followers,