Cymbeline Thoughts

Jessie Kilbourn

King

English Comp II

Due October 15, 2013

Cymbeline Thoughts

Every person has the background needed to write poems because it relies on the writer's feelings, history and viewpoint. These perceptions draw on the person's senses, giving profound access to memories, in turn, making it interesting for the reader. In William Shakespeare's "Fear No More the Heat o' the Sun," he uses his background to portray the moving dialogue among friends consoling a loved one. This poem was written in ca. 1610 from a playwright that Shakespeare did while living in London. This extract was a key point in the play called "Cymbeline." This woman named Imogen is disguised like a man named Fidele, the man who is dead, and fakes her death by taking a drug to mislead others. Two brothers discuss his/her death while granting peace upon the body. Just as Desdemona in "Othello" and Hermione in "A Winter's Tale," Shakespeare portrays women as successful and gives off the essence of femininity. After the death of his eleven year old son, Shakespeare wrote plays of death and more of women dying. Shakespeare respects women, but does not like that they can have children for men to love and they be so easily taken away by disease. Shakespeare uses figures of speech to reflect on his personal vendettas which create imagery for the audience to experience giving the ever-classic Shakespearian theme.

While Shakespeare uses many figures of speech to provide the audience with sympathy for the death, repetition, symbolism, and metaphor are the three best to show off his talents. Shakespeare writes, "Fear no more" in the first three stanzas to give strength but simplicity to the deserving, Fidele. In the last stanza, "Harm thee, charme thee, forbeare thee, neere thee" is stating the wish of no supernatural force to take him, no force to harm his peace. At the end of stanzas one through three, the brothers tell the readers to fear no more, "As Chimney-Sweepers come to dust" (1) because all must come to an end. The second figure of speech, symbolism, gives better meaning to the words after being sought after. He writes, "Feare no more the frowne o' th' Great" meaning, no longer must he take orders from authority, and no longer must he think before he speaks. In the same stanza, "The Scepter, Learning, Physicke must" is telling Fidele he can now breathe and be at rest, as all must "come to dust". The entire poem is a metaphor for gaining wonderful rewards after death compared to taking to one's spiritual conduct. Shakespeare exercises complex metaphors to portray the struggles one experiences in a lifetime and as a result inspires the readers to overcome all opinions that lead one