The Representations of Illness in William Shakespeare’s Selected Sonnets

Abstract

Poets usually employ a variety of literary devices to convey their intended messages without explicitly disclosing them, despite the fact that poets compose their poems for specific purposes and subjects. Nevertheless, William Shakespeare composes his sonnets with the intention of combining the images of love and disease into a crucible, reflecting the characteristics of his era. This amalgamation creates a cohesive poetic picture for the reader by using metaphor and allegory to express the poet’s desired message. One of the most notable techniques is Shakespeare's use of illness imagery to convey love's suffering. The aim of the study is to examine a number of poems written by the renowned English poet William Shakespeare in order to explore how he utilizes illnesses, their symptoms, and their causes to convey love, suffering, and death. It focuses on evaluating selected poems from Shakespeare’s sonnets, extracting metaphorical imagery, and examining their relevance to the historical context of their composition. The research came to the conclusion that Shakespeare used allegories, metaphors, and direct imagery in some of the works chosen for this analysis in order to chronicle and describe certain illnesses that were common throughout the Elizabethan period.