Compare the ways in which Shakespeare and Marvell have used poetic form, structure and language to present their thoughts and feelings of love
Both Shakespeare and Marvell present a vast array of thoughts and feelings regarding love. Shakespeare makes his true thoughts and feelings apparent through a declaration in ‘Sonnet 116’ by stating how love cannot be shaken by adversary or changed by time. However, in Marvell’s ‘To his Coy Mistress’ the speaker is more impatient, presenting a sense of carnal desire to fulfil his sexual desires rather than true love. Where Shakespeare is influenced by the concept of romantic love in the Elizabethan era and follows traditional sonnet formats to create passion, Marvell creates a satirical tone to comment on romantic love through the conventions of a metaphysical poem. Despite this difference, time is personified in both poems to represent an enemy of all lovers. Shakespeare is inspired by his era and is more sincere and passionate in his portrayal and belief of true and constant love in ‘Sonnet 116’, whereas in Marvell’s ‘To his Coy Mistress’, the speaker is driven by passion and desire to fulfil lust, that could potentially turn into love. Marvell’s representation may be harsh, but it is more considerate of a harsher reality. Through structure, Shakespeare defines his true feelings of love – by telling the reader what love is, and what it isn’t. It presents the extreme ideal of romantic love and insists that this is the only love that can be ‘true’, otherwise ‘no man ever loved’. The division of his argument is presented through conventional Sonnet quatrains. In the first quatrain, Shakespeare says that love – ‘the marriage of true minds’- is perfect and unchanging and does not differ when there are changes in a loved one. The idea of marriage is present in the background of this poem from the very first line. However,