What are the literary devices in "Sonnet 91"?

As a way of beginning to answer this question, you might
want to focus on the final rhyming couplet that concludes this excellent poem. Let us
remind ourselves of what it says:

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Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst
take

All this away, and me most wretched
make.

Having established how
the love that his beloved has for him makes him the envy of men, no matter how rich they
are or how noble they are in birth, this is a rather surprising closing for a number of
reasons. Firstly, note that this couplet contains an oxymoron. We do not associate the
state of being in love with wretchedness, yet this sonnet points towards the way in
which love can cause happiness, but also pain and conccern. Normally, sonnets attempted
to glorify and honour love, but Shakespeare deliberately goes against this tendency to
create a shocking finale that points towards a deeper truth about the state of being in
love and the concern and worry that it can cause.

You might
like to think to about how the ending of this sonnet is a very shockingly honest
expression of the feelings of the speaker, leaving him very vulnerable and open to pain.
Thsi negative couplet stands in stark contrast to the rest of the poem, and is very
different to the normal hyperbolic focus on love of other sonnets. Yet it is the turn in
these two lines that make the poem so effective, as Shakespeare at once extols but also
points out the perilous position of being in love. Central to understanding this poem is
therefore appreciating the oxymoron at the end of the sonnet and how it contributes to
the meaning of the poem as a whole. Hopefully you can use this as a basis to go and
discover other literary devices. Good luck!