Shakespeare’s Sonnets

1. Shakespeare’s Sonnets An Introduction to the Language

2. Why Study Shakespeare’s Sonnet? • Explore unanswerable questions about human life • Love, war, morality, suffering, change • Rewarding • Close reading of fourteen lines emphasizes the importance of words • Introduction to Shakespeare’s language • Shorter, more manageable format

3. History of the Sonnet • Fransesco Petrarch (1304-74): Italian poet • Courtly love, love at first sight, beautiful women, unattainable love, religious imagery • We read translations • Sir Thomas Wyatt (1502-42) and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-47)introduced the Petrarchan model to England

4. Sonnet Form • Fourteen lines • Iambic pentameter: lines of poetry that can be divided into 5 metric feet with alternating unstressed and stressed syllables. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H2htG2bv20 • Petrarchan/Italian • Octave (8 lines) followed by a sestet (6 lines) • ABBAABBA CDCDCD • Shakespearean • Three quatrains (4 lines) followed by concluding couplet • ABAB CDCD EFEF GG • Fixed form but remarkably flexible

5. Shakespeare’s Sonnets • 154 in total • Published in 1609 • Collection rather than a sequence • Aware of Petrarchan conventions sometimes uses them, just as often upends them • The cruel loved one in many of his sonnets is a man rather than a woman • The “Dark Lady” in sonnets 127-152 is neither virtuous nor ideally beautiful

6. Sonnet 18 Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (A) Thou art more lovely and more temperate: (B) Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, (A) And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: (B) Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines (C) and often is his gold complexion dimmed; (D) And every fair from fair sometimes declines, (C) By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed; (D) But thy eternal summer shall not fade, (E) Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st; (F) Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade, (E) When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st; (F) So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, (G) So long lives this, and this give life to thee. (G)

7. Sonnet 18 • Do you understand what is being described in the sonnet? • Do you recognize any literary devices?

8. Paraphrase: Sonnet 18 Ooooh Baby I think I shall compare you to a summer day But, you know, you’re prettier and even better, even calm Because sometimes it gets windy and the buds on the trees get shaken off And sometimes summer doesn’t last very long Sometimes it’s too hot And everything gorgeous loses its looks By getting hit by a truck or just because everyone and everything gets old and ugly and shabby BUT (and here’s the turn) you’re going to keep your looks forever Your beatuty will last forever I’m going to make sure you never lose your good looks And that nasty old Death can never brag about owning you Because I shall write this poem for you As long as men can breathe (are you breathing?) And as long as men can see (are you looking at this poem?) Then this poem lives, and it gives life and memory to your beauty.

9. Sonnet 18 • What does this particular rhyme scheme contribute to the poem?

10. Sonnets 29 & 130 • Read • Then • Label the 14 lines • 3 quatrains • The couplet • Rhyme scheme • Mark iambic pentameter of the first 2 lines • Finally, in groups PARAPHRASE one of the two sonnets.