Similarities Between Sonnet 18 And My Last Duchess

In these short poems, the authors utilize particular rhetorical techniques and methods to reflect the speakers’ personality and motivation. Therefore, presenting the speaker becomes the main focus of the authors. In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 and Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess,” both poems reflect the speakers’ traits through monologue, figurative language, and symbolism. However, these two speakers’ personalities are different due to their attitude toward their beloved. The speaker in Sonnet 18 is gentle and delighted but frustrated because the ideal metaphor comparison of summer is not perfect for describing his beloved; the poem thus suggests that the way you love others reflects how you feel about yourself. In contrast, the speaker in the “My Last Duchess” is flippant, jealous and manipulative, which argues that the speaker is complaining about his wife reflect how some powerful men cannot accept their own failure and place

In the “By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed./But thy eternal summer shall not fade,/Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;/Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,/When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st” (Line 8-12), the speaker uses personification that letting “[d]eath” as a person who cannot easily bring the speaker’s beloved into another world. The speaker is very confident that his beloved’s beauty will not fade because not only is beloved’s beauty he always believes but also is the best poem the speaker can write to beloved. However, the reason that the speaker feels a little bit sad is he cannot find the precise item to describe his beloved, which indicates that the speaker is very strict with himself and the way he loves his