“Sonnet 23” and “Rapunzstiltskin”

In Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 23” and Liz Lochhead’s “Rapunzstiltskin”, both poets show different views on what love is and whether or not there is such a thing as “true love”. Shakespeare presents his views of love as an idealised love which is eternal and deep whereas Lochhead presents her views on love raising the famous question “What do women want?” through the two characters in her fairy-tale poem. Shakespeare uses the imagery of a summer’s day to show how strong his love is and how it will last longer than summer. Lochhead uses the imagery of a fairy tale setting to show that in a place where everything is suppose to be perfect and “everybody lives happily ever after” that it isn’t and instead through the use of her words and structure show that in this fair tale land, love is hard to find and can be related to the real world. This essay will develop this argument through analysing these images, how the poet structures their poems and by analysing the...