On The Themes Of "Fair, Kind, True" In Shadespeare's Sonnets

Shakespeare's sonnets are recognized as "the greatest mystery in British literature". With ambiguous and symbolic technique, delicate and fantastic conceit, sensuous and profound touch, Shakespeare depicted intricate and fiery affectional change, endowed sonnets with mystique of biography, and every poem with "somewhat latent, moral and philosophical significance", which became a topic discussed by generations.The themes of Shakespeare's sonnets include three aspects: the ideas about affection and love, the ideas about ethic ,and about aesthetic, and they are idealized by fair, kind and true. The affection in his sonnets, based on the ode to friendship and love, embodies the affirmation and appreciation of fair, and conveys the ideal that poetry can overcome time and make fair eternal. His ethic is idealized by virtue, shaping a society of punishing villainy and honoring virtue. The virtue attacks the hypocritical and filthy old ethical system, to realize the ideal harmonious society by means of moral edification, rational lead and efforts. Aesthetic of his sonnets represents his culminating ideal for art, emphasizing the natural expression of authentic emotion, soulful description of genuine humanity, objective reveal of real world, not artificial but spontaneous. The true regards the fair as its object and is realized eventually under the lead of the virtue, the true is highly harmonious with fair and the virtue.The primary content of Shakespeare's sonnets is praising for friendship and love, eulogizing fine emotion world, longing for establishing an amicable and harmonious social ethical order, looking for authentic and objective aesthetic, viz. the artistic concept and social ideal of fair, kind and true are highly harmonious. However, the harmony of fair, kind and true is inherent in love. The wish of bringing the ideal into being in poetry is only an Utopian.The theme of Shakespeare's sonnets, fair, kind and true, is abundant in significance: praise for friendship, love, marriage and life value, criticism of social reality, enquiry into individual fate, meditation on time, society, history and art. Not only does it present the style and features of humanism of the age, but also the universal value and comprehensive significance of transcending the age.