Yanisa Lekprasert (Atom) 1208

Idea 20 : An evil spirit, your beauty, haunts me still

By Michael Drayton

Subject Unrequited love

Occasion In the speakers subconscious

Organization
Shakespearean rhyme scheme (ABAB CDCD EFEF GG)
The reason is that the sonnet talks about how love is not a totally positive thing in ones life,
rather it also has a negative impact as the speaker suggests that it could be evil. In other words,
love is imperfect falling under the Shakespearean way of creating a sonnet talking about
imperfection.

Tone Suffering, bittersweet, and sorrowful

Theme The different perspective of love

Titles significance
The title gives readers the idea that the speaker views love as both beauty and evil.

Speaker A man with an unrequited love

Shift Line 13 A shift from describing a problem to accepting it
 A bittersweet Shakespearean sonnet, Idea 20 : An evil spirit, your beauty, haunts me

still, written by Michael Drayton demonstrates the different perspective of love through diction.

The fact that Drayton chooses to have diction as one of the literary devices in the sonnet

emphasizes how a beautiful thing in many peoples view, love, can also give a negative impact to

them in his own point of view. For example, Drayton mentions that An evil spirit, your beauty,

haunts me still. The way the words evil and beauty are arranged in the same sentence

conveys to readers that one thing, which is love in this case, is both an evil and a beauty.

However, Drayton focuses on the devil side of the love by stating that ...haunts me still. It

illustrates that regardless of how long the time has passed, the evil, as known as the love, keeps

haunting the speaker or a man with an unrequited love due to the fact that the poet uses the word

still, informing readers that the action is still impacting him in a sorrowful way in the present.

Drayton also says in the last line, By this good-wicked spirit, sweet angel-devil. It depicts that

the love is both good and wicked, as well as both a sweet angel and a devil. The line highlights

the fact that love is imperfect, not always having an angelic trait, but sometimes holding an

agony in its own spirit. This idea is supported by the way that Drayton chooses to use both the

negative and positive words good-wicked and angel-devil describing only one particular

thing, love. However, the poet states that Thus am I still provokd to every evil before the line

mentioned above. The reason of including this line is that Drayton intends to tell readers that

though love is not perfect, giving him evil impacts, he still needs it and that he is provoked by

it. This can be supported from where Drayton mentions ...provoks to every evil showing that

the every evil, being the love in this case, has a strong important impact on him though it is

evil. Also, The fact that the word provoked is used makes the poets focus become more
powerful in a way that it has a specific meaning of the love being needed, stimulating his life to

keep going. This means, if his life consists of no love, it might not be able to continue.