Shakespeares Sonnets

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Shakespeares Sonnets

• Above right Title-page of 1609 Quarto, printed
  by Thomas Thorpe

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Why study the sonnets?

• to situate Shakespeares writing of the sonnets
  historically, in the context of his authorship
  generally and within the broader context of
  Elizabethan literary fashions, conventions and
  economies of production.
• to compare and contrast Shakespeares poetic
  writing with his dramatic writing, especially in
  terms of his experimentation with rhetorical
  schemes and tropes.
• to understand how Shakespeare works within and
  against the conventions of an established
  literary genre.
• to consider how patterns of experience and
  thought shape or anticipate such conventions as
  character, utterance and perception.

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The sonnets text and context

• First printed in 1609 Quarto edition probably
  written from early 1590s on.
• Popularity of the sonnet form through the mid- to
  late 1590s initiated by Philip Sidneys
  Astrophil and Stella (1591) courtly love
  tradition.
• Written for a semi-private audience, circulated
  in manuscript.
• Francis Meres (1598) refers to Shakespeares
  sugared sonnets among his private friends.

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The sonnets text and context

• Shakespeare a dramatist and actor but also a
  poet staking a claim for his creative authorship.
• Narrative poems Venus and Adonis (1593) and
  The Rape of Lucrece (1594) published for
  profit and patronage established Shakespeares
  reputation as a writer.
• Potential biographical context?
• Sonnets 1 to 126 addressed to a fair youth 127
  to 152 addressed to the dark lady.

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The sonnets text and context

• Dedication following the title-page to Q1609.

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Venus and Adonis Francois Lemoyne (1729)
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Portrait of Henry Wriothesley, Earl of
Southampton, c. 1594.
The love I dedicate to your lordship is without
end What I have done is yours what I have to do
is yours being part in all I have, devoted
yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would show
greater meantime, as it is, it is bound to your
lordship, to whom I wish long life still
lengthened with all happiness (From the
dedication to The Rape of Lucrece).
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What is a sonnet?
A Sonnet is a fourteen-line lyric poem written
principally in iambic pentameter, and whose
subject is usually romance or love, traditionally
of a male poet in adoration of an often
unobtainable female muse. The sonnet takes two
forms.

• English Sonnet (Shakespearean)
• Named for, but not invented by Shakespeare
  popularized by Sidney.
• Divided into three quatrains rhyming abab cdcd
  efef plus a rhyming (heroic) couplet, gg.
• Less emphasis on volta after the eighth line.
• Balloon-and-pin-prick pattern of problem
  development and resolution quick turn or witty
  conclusion, sometimes irony, in couplet.
• Adopts and adapts Petrarchan conventions
  characterized by rhetorical copia and invention.

• Italian Sonnet (Petrarchan)
• Named for Italian poet Petrarch who popularized
  the form in 14th-century Italy.
• Divided into octave (eight lines) and sestet
  (six lines) typical rhyme scheme is abba abba
  cde cde.
• The volta or change of idea occurs in the
  transition from octave to sestet.
• Typical devices include exaggerated comparison
  or metaphor and striking oxymoron (Petrarchan
  conceit) blazon isocolon despairing poet
  tormented by a disdainful mistress.

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Petrarchan or English Sonnet?
from Philip Sidney, Astrophel and Stella
(1590) Sonnet II Not at the first sight, nor
with a dribbed shot,Loue gaue the wound, which,
while I breathe, will bleedeBut knowne worth
did in tract of time proceed,Till by degrees, it
had full conquest got. I saw and lik'd I lik'd
but loued notI lou'd, but straight did not what
Loue decreedAt length, to Loues decrees I,
forc'd, agreed,Yet with repining at so partiall
lot.Now, euen that footstep of lost libertieIs
gone and now, like slaue-borne Muscouite,I call
it praise to suffer tyrannieAnd nowe imploy the
remnant of my witTo make myselfe beleeue that
all is well,While, with a feeling skill, I paint
my hell.
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Typical English Sonnet
From Bartholomew Griffin, Sonnets to Fidessa
(1596) My Lady's hair is threads of beaten gold
Her front the purest crystal eye hath seen Her
eyes the brightest stars the heavens hold Her
cheeks, red roses, such as seld have been Her
pretty lips of red vermilion dye Her hand of
ivory the purest white Her blush AURORA, or the
morning sky. Her breast displays two silver
fountains bright The spheres, her voice her
grace, the Graces three Her body is the saint
that I adore Her smiles and favours, sweet as
honey be. Her feet, fair THETIS praiseth
evermore. But Ah, the worst and last is yet
behind For of a griffon she doth bear the
mind!
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Sonnet 1

• Features of Sonnet 1
• Introduces ideas that run through first sequence
• youth and beauty of addressee speech-utterance.
• inevitable passage of time.
• ephemeral nature of beauty, human body
• youths vanity, later pride.
• Establishes rhetorical, ideational patterns
• complex development of metaphor.
• mixed metaphor (catachresis).
• hyperbole.
• development of ideation.

FROM fairest creatures we desire increase, That
thereby beauty's rose might never die, But as the
riper should by time decease, His tender heir
might bear his memory But thou, contracted to
thine own bright eyes, Feed'st thy light'st flame
with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where
abundance lies, Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet
self too cruel. Thou that art now the world's
fresh ornament And only herald to the gaudy
spring, Within thine own bud buriest thy
content And, tender churl, makest waste in
niggarding. Pity the world, or else this
glutton be, To eat the world's due, by the
grave and thee.
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Sonnet 18

• Features of Sonnet 18
• poem is a developed metaphor that answers
  initial question.
• syntax is simple lyrical quality.
• balloon-and-pin-prick structure.
• proposes to immortalize the youth by way of the
  poem itself.
• proposes relationship between speaker and
  addressee.
• establishes relationship between writing and
  utterance, poet and speaker.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art
more lovely and more temperate Rough winds do
shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease
hath all too short a date Sometime too hot the
eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold
complexion dimm'd And every fair from fair
sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing
course untrimm'd But thy eternal summer shall
not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou
owest Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his
shade, When in eternal lines to time thou
growest So long as men can breathe or eyes
can see, So long lives this and this gives life
to thee.
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Sonnet 20

• Features of Sonnet 20
• use of paradox.
• expresses sexual dilemma of the speaker.
• plays with conventional gender associations.
• balloon-and-pin-prick structure.
• distinction between love and loves use.

A woman's face with Nature's own hand
painted Hast thou, the master-mistress of my
passion A woman's gentle heart, but not
acquainted With shifting change, as is false
women's fashion An eye more bright than theirs,
less false in rolling, Gilding the object
whereupon it gazeth A man in hue, all 'hues' in
his controlling, Much steals men's eyes and
women's souls amazeth. And for a woman wert thou
first created Till Nature, as she wrought thee,
fell a-doting, And by addition me of thee
defeated, By adding one thing to my purpose
nothing. But since she prick'd thee out for
women's pleasure, Mine be thy love and thy
love's use their treasure.
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Sonnet 29

• Features of Sonnet 29
• introduces idea of speakers suffering (from
  sonnet 26).
• develops idea of unique love.
• diction outcast state, fortune, rich,
  possessd, wealth, kings.
• balloon-and-pin-prick structure.

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I
all alone beweep my outcast state And trouble
deaf heaven with my bootless cries And look upon
myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one
more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him
with friends possess'd, Desiring this man's art
and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy
contented least Yet in these thoughts myself
almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then
my state, Like to the lark at break of day
arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at
heaven's gate For thy sweet love remember'd
such wealth brings That then I scorn to change
my state with kings.
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Sonnet 116

• Features of Sonnet 116
• relationship between speaker/addressee
  culminates in marriage of true minds
  metaphysical union?
• sustained development upon the question of what
  is love.
• poem is very restrained a rationalized
  relationship.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit
impediments. Love is not love Which alters when
it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to
remove O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That
looks on tempests and is never shaken It is the
star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's
unknown, although his height be taken. Love's
not Time's fool, though rosy lips and
cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass
come Love alters not with his brief hours and
weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of
doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I
never writ, nor no man ever loved.
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The Dark Lady sequence 127-152

• Addresses unknown historical personage dark
  because the speaker repeatedly references her
  dark hair, complexion and eyes.
• Undermines Petrarchan conventions of romantic
  love poetry by discarding or not idealizing
  stereotypes of femininity.
• What does this sequence suggest about the
  poet-muse relationship?

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Sonnet 127

• Features of Sonnet 127
• first quatrain addresses the old age of poetic
  tradition and convention concerned with colour.
• second quatrain develops a metaphor comparing
  real beauty to the falseness of make-up.
• third quatrain initiates a complex paradox
  eyes are personified mourners who mourn their
  lack of beauty, which is truly beautiful because
  not false.

In the old age black was not counted fair, Or if
it were, it bore not beauty's name But now is
black beauty's successive heir, And beauty
slander'd with a bastard shame For since each
hand hath put on nature's power, Fairing the foul
with art's false borrow'd face, Sweet beauty hath
no name, no holy bower, But is profaned, if not
lives in disgrace. Therefore my mistress' brows
are raven black, Her eyes so suited, and they
mourners seem At such who, not born fair, no
beauty lack, Slandering creation with a false
esteem Yet so they mourn, becoming of their
woe, That every tongue says beauty should look
so.
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Elizabeth I, The Ditchley Portrait (1592)
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Sonnet 129

• Features of Sonnet 129
• not directly addressed to or about dark lady.
• development upon idea of lust.
• the often trochaic/spondaic and very disrupted
  rhythm accentuates the state of mind produced by
  lust.
• idea of lust here as compared to marriage of
  true minds?

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust
in action and till action, lust Is perjured,
murderous, bloody, full of blame, Savage,
extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, Enjoy'd no
sooner but despised straight, Past reason hunted,
and no sooner had Past reason hated, as a
swallow'd bait On purpose laid to make the taker
mad Mad in pursuit and in possession so Had,
having, and in quest to have, extreme A bliss in
proof, and proved, a very woe Before, a joy
proposed behind, a dream. All this the world
well knows yet none knows well To shun the
heaven that leads men to this hell.
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Sonnet 130

• Features of Sonnet 130
• play upon standard Petrarchan tropes.
• use of contra-blazon, synecdoche and metaphor.
• ironic reversal in the rhyming couplet.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun Coral
is far more red than her lips' red If snow be
white, why then her breasts are dun If hairs be
wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen
roses damask'd, red and white, But no such roses
see I in her cheeks And in some perfumes is
there more delight Than in the breath that from
my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet
well I know That music hath a far more pleasing
sound I grant I never saw a goddess go My
mistress, when she walks, treads on the
ground And yet, by heaven, I think my love as
rare As any she belied with false compare.