Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Shakespeare’s Sonnets 1592-1598 Based on information from: http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/sonnetintroduction.html

Introduction to Shakespeare's Sonnets • The Sonnets are Shakespeare's most popular works, and a few of them, such as Sonnet 18 (Shall I compare thee to a summer's day), Sonnet 116 (Let me not to the marriage of true minds), and Sonnet 73(That time of year thou mayst in me behold), have become the most widely-read poems in all of English literature.

Composition Date of the Sonnets • Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, likely composed over an extended period from 1592 to 1598, the year in which Francis Meres referred to Shakespeare's "sugred sonnets": • The witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous & honey-tongued Shakespeare, witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugared sonnets among his private friends, &c. (Palladis Tamia: Wit's Treasury) • In 1609 Thomas Thorpe published Shakespeare's sonnets, no doubt without the author's permission, in quarto format, along with Shakespeare's long poem, The Passionate Pilgrim. The sonnets were dedicated to a W. H., whose identity remains a mystery, although William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, is frequently suggested because Shakespeare's First Folio (1623) was also dedicated to him.

Narrative of the Sonnets • The majority of the sonnets (1-126) are addressed to a young man, with whom the speaker has an intense romantic relationship. • The poet spends the first seventeen sonnets trying to convince the young man to marry and have children; beautiful children that will look just like their father, ensuring his immortality. • Many of the remaining sonnets in the young man sequence focus on the power of poetry and pure love to defeat death and "all oblivious enmity" (55.9). • The final sonnets (127-154) are addressed to a promiscuous and scheming woman known to modern readers as the dark lady. Both the poet and his young man have become obsessed with the raven-haired temptress in these sonnets, and the poet's whole being is at odds with his insatiable "sickly appetite" (147.4). • The tone is distressing, with language of sensual feasting, uncontrollable urges, and sinful consumption.

Shakespearean Sonnet Basics: Iambic Pentameter and the English Sonnet Style • Shakespeare's sonnets are written predominantly in a meter called iambic pentameter, a rhyme scheme in which each sonnet line consists of ten syllables. • The syllables are divided into five pairs called iambs or iambic feet. An iamb is a metrical unit made up of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable. An example of an iamb would be good BYE. A line of iambic pentameter flows like this: • baBOOM/ baBOOM / baBOOM / baBOOM / baBOOM. Here are some examples from the sonnets:When I / do COUNT / the CLOCK / that TELLS / the TIME (Sonnet 12)

Sonnet Structure • There are fourteen lines in a Shakespearean sonnet. • The first twelve lines are divided into three quatrains with four lines each. • In the three quatrains the poet establishes a theme or problem and then resolves it in the final two lines, called the couplet. • The rhyme scheme of the quatrains is ababcdcdefef. The couplet has the rhyme scheme gg. • This sonnet structure is commonly called the English sonnet or the Shakespearean sonnet

The following presentation of Sonnet 18, one of Shakespeare's most famous, will help you visualize the rhyming pattern of the sonnets. I capitalized the last part of each line and typed a letter to the left of the line to indicate the pattern. The meaning of each line appears at right. Comment: In Shakespeare's time, May (Line 3) was considered a summer month.

How to Analyze a Shakespearean Sonnet • Find the Theme Love is the overarching theme of the sonnets, there are three specific underlying themes: the brevity of life, the transience of beauty, the trappings of desire

The 1st 2 of these underlying themes are the focus of the early sonnets addressed to the young man (in particular Sonnets 1-17) where the poet argues that having children to carry on one's beauty is the only way to conquer the ravages of time. • In the middle sonnets of the young man sequence the poet tries to immortalize the young man through his own poetry (most famous Sonnet 18 and Sonnet 55). • The late sonnets of the young man sequence there is a shift to pure love as the solution to mortality (as in Sonnet 116). When choosing a sonnet to analyze it is beneficial to explore the theme as it relates to the sonnets around it.

Examine the Literary Devices • Shakespeare likely did not write his sonnets with a conscious emphasis on literary devices. However, in the era of postmodern literary theory and close reading, much weight is given to the construction or deconstruction of the sonnets and Shakespeare's use of figures of speech such as: • Alliteration Conceit • Assonance Apostrophe • Antithesis Extended Metaphor • Enjambment Conflict • Metonymy Consonance • Synecdoche Repetition • Oxymoron Juxtaposition • Personification Irony • Internal rhyme Caesura • Sexual puns and double entendres

Find a Copy of the Oxford English Dictionary • Researching the history of words Shakespeare used is a sure way to gain a greater understanding of the sonnets and will sometimes lead to new and fascinating commentary. Words that today have a specific meaning, such as hideous (see Sonnet 12) or gaudy (see Sonnet 1) often could have multiple meanings as the rapidly-changing language of the time was still heavily influenced by Old French and Middle and Old English. The OED is available online by subscription, as are a couple of free etymological dictionaries.

An Outline of the Contents of Shakespeare's Sonnets • Nos. 1-17 they are addressed to a young man of beauty and distinction, who is urged by the poet to marry on the ground that he should perpetuate his charms through offspring. Nos. 18-19 form a pair on the conventional theme of a friend or lover made immortal through the praise of poetry.

Nos. 20-25 are individual compositions. No.20 is addressed to a young man whose beauty is such that the poet playfully regrets that he cannot be loved as a woman. No. 21 is a declaration that the poet will not praise his love in the exaggerated terms of the sonneteers, but with simple truth. No. 22 is a love-sonnet based on a familiar "conceit" of the period, -- the exchange of hearts; No. 24 on another familiar conceit, the conflict of eye and heart. Nos. 23 and 25 deal with love, again, in terms that suggest nothing as to the person addressed.

Nos. 26-28 seem to be connected, as written during a period of absence, and it has been thought that Nos. 29-32 belong to the same group. Sonnets 29 and 30, which are among the greatest of Shakespeare's lyrics, are parallel studies of the same theme; they may have been written at the same time, or perhaps are more naturally regarded as having been brought together because of similarity of subject.

For more info: • http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/sonnetgroupanalysis.html

Sonnet Theories • The earliest theory, and that which has the largest and strongest support, is that they are strictly autobiographical, and tell a story of Shakespeare's London life through a certain number of years -- a curious story of a remarkable private friendship of his with a certain young man of high rank, called merely "Mr. W. H." in the dedication of the Sonnets when they were published in 1609; which friendship was complicated by a love-intrigue, and by the presence on the scene of another rival poet.

Another theory is that a good many of the Sonnets are autobiographical, but that others, of a non-personal nature, are jumbled with those. • A third theory, or a variation of the last, is that, while some of the Sonnets are autobiographical, or written in Shakespeare's own name, a good many of them are vicarious, or written by him for other people -- notably for the Earl of Southampton and the Earl of Pembroke on occasions when they wanted the use of Shakespeare's pen.

A fifth theory is that they are wholly fantastic and imaginary, a novel of friendship and love sketched out by Shakespeare and told imperfectly and in a shadowy manner in lyrics supposed to be spoken by the fancied persons • Sixth is that they are a mystic or Platonic allegory, in which Shakespeare is really present, but, as it were, far back, and hid in symbolisms and hyperboles of his own contriving..

Shakespeare’s Sonnets