Explain how themes/ideas were developed in the texts you have studied.Sonnets 18 and 29 by William Shakespeare.

In Sonnets 18 and 29 Shakespeare discusses the themes of love, beauty, time and depression. He develops these themes through the structure of the sonnet. The structure of a sonnet consists of three quatrains and a couplet.

In Sonnet 18 Shakespeare compares his friends beauty to a summer’s day. He states his friends loveliness is greater than the most perfect thing he can imagine. A summers day is flawed, it can be too hot, too overcast or too windy. The second quatrain takes the theme of loveliness into a broader context. “Every fair from fair sometime declines”. Shakespeare says that all things beautiful fade away. However at the beginning of the third quatrain (line 9) Shakespeare begins to refute the power of time to erode loveliness. “But thy eternal summer shall not fade”. Interestingly S/S uses three negatives to state his opposition to the authority of time and death. “Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st”. “Nor shall death (personified) boast he has ...