Shakespeare has been noted as one of the most cited Romantic writers. One of his most repeated lines is "If I compare you to a summer's day, you are more beautiful and more temperate" (Sonnet 12, 1-2). Despite using abundant Petrarchan imagery, Shakespeare also conveys the punishing characteristics of love as seen in Sonnet 147. Shakespeare articulates his definition of love by modeling love as an illness using structure, metaphor, tone, and imagery. Shakespearean sonnets contain three quatrains and a couplet with a strict rhyme scheme. The quatrains alternate in rhyme (ABAB CDCD EFEF) and end with a rhyming couplet. All fourteen lines are written in iambic pentameter, which consists of five iambic feet. Iambic feet contain an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Additionally, each quatrain introduces or expands an idea. As demonstrated in Sonnet 147, which focuses on the comparison of his love to an illness, each quatrain advances this point. The first quatrain describes the disease itself and his vulnerability to it: "My love is like a fever, still yearning for that which nurses the disease longest, feeding on that which preserves the sick, the uncertain and sickly appetite of please". (1043)The second quatrain expands on this metaphor and adds a new idea. The speaker believes that the idea of ​​reason is as foolish as a doctor trying to cure him of lovesickness - an impossible feat: "My reason, the doctor of my love, angry because his prescriptions were not followed , he left me, and now I'm desperate." approveThe desire is death, which the physicist was waiting for. (1043) The third quatrain describes the consequences of abandoning reason as the narrator has now gone mad. Furthermore, the narrator recognizes that he is n...... middle of paper ......onnet 147 employs literary techniques to hide the turbulent side of love. Many of Shakespeare's other sonnets focus on the beauty of ideal love, but Sonnet 147 shows its destructive side. Love can be all-consuming and lead to madness. Likewise, having a fever can cause disappointment; men can go crazy when they are in love. Structure, metaphor, tone, and imagery help convey the overall message: that love is a disease throughout Sonnet 147. Works Cited Shakespeare, William. "Sonnet 12." The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries. Ed. MH Abrams. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. 2000. 1030-.Shakespeare, William. "Sonnet 147." The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries. Ed. MH Abrams. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. 2000. 11043.