SONNETS
A
love poem with a special format:
1)
always 14 lines
2)
usually iambic pentameter (rhythm and line length)
3)
one of the following rhyme schemes:
Petrarchan Shakespearean
A
A
B
B
B
A
QUATRAIN
A
B
A
OCTAVE
C
B
D
QUATRAIN
B
C
A
D
C
E
D
F
QUATRAIN
E
SESTET
E
C
F
D
G
RHYMING
E
G
COUPLET
PETRARCHAN
SONNET:
SHAKESPEAREAN
SONNET:
·
Dealt
with many subjects ranging from love to life, death, fame and wealth; some are
even written to a man! (probably
his patron)
·
The three
quatrains developed his idea and the couplet introduced a twist to the
perspective.
·
His
sonnets are known by their number &/or first line, e.g. Sonnet 18, Shall I
Compare Thee ...
CONTEMPORARY
SONNETS:
might have different rhyme schemes and many topics.
Recurring
Images of Women
Eve
– the Temptress.
From the time of Eve and The Fall, woman is considered evil and a drawback
for man. This idea was very popular
in the Middle Ages when most of the books were written by monks.
The
Virgin Mary/Madonna. Other pictures of women are that, like the
mother of Jesus, they are models of virtue, homeliness and patience.
Remember, Elizabeth I, one of Shakespeare’s sovereigns, was a very
strong woman called “the virgin queen”.
(The US state of Virginia and the Virgin Islands are named after her.)
The best and most complete commentaries I have seen about the sonnets is at http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com.
The following commentary is taken from there.
Sonnet 18
This is one of the most famous of all the sonnets.
Line 1. This is taken usually to mean 'What if I were to compare
thee etc?' The stock comparisons of the loved one to all the beauteous things in nature hover in the background throughout.
Line 2. The youth's beauty is more perfect than the beauty of a summer day. more temperate - more gentle, more restrained,
whereas the summer's day might have violent excesses in store, such as are about to be described.
Line 3. May was a summer month in Shakespeare's time, because the calendar in use lagged behind the true sidereal calendar by
at least a fortnight.
darling buds of May - the beautiful, much loved buds of the
early summer; favourite flowers.
Line 4. Legal terminology. The summer holds a lease on part of the
year, but the lease is too short, and has an early termination (date).
5. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
Line 5. Sometime = on occasion, sometimes; the eye of heaven = the sun.
The sun of heaven, and the beloved's sun could both scorch
and hide itself from the lover. (See the next line).
Line 6. his gold complexion = his (the sun's) golden face. It would
be dimmed by clouds and on overcast days generally.
Line 7.. All beautiful things (every fair) occasionally become inferior
in comparison with their essential previous state of beauty (from fair). They all decline from perfection.
Line 8. untrimmed - this can refer to the ballast (trimming) on a ship
which keeps it stable; or to a lack of ornament and decoration. The greater difficulty however is to decide
whether "untrimmed" refers to nature, or chance, or every fair in the line above, or to the effect of
nature's changing course?
Line 9. Referring forwards to the eternity promised by the ever
living poet in the next few lines, through his verse.
Line 10. Nor shall it (your eternal summer) lose its hold on that beauty which you so richly possess. ow'st = ownest, possess.
By metonymy we understand 'nor shall you lose any of your beauty'.
Line 11. Several half echoes here. The biblical ones are probably 'Oh death where is thy sting? Or grave thy victory?'
implying that death normally boasts of his conquests over life. And Psalms 23.3.: 'Yea though I walk through the valley of
the shadow of death I will fear no evil ' In classical literature the shades flitted helplessly in the underworld like gibbering
ghosts.
Line 12. in eternal lines = in the undying lines of my verse. Perhaps with a reference to progeny, and lines of descent, but
it seems that the procreation theme has already been abandoned. Possibly
also refers to wrinkles coming with age, the youth's beauty might outlast the
ravages of aging (and time).
to time thou grow'st - you keep pace with time, you grow as time grows.
Line 13. For as long as humans live and breathe upon the earth, for
as long as there are seeing eyes on the earth.
Line 14. That is how long these verses will live, celebrating you, and continually renewing your life. But one is left with a slight
residual feeling that perhaps the youth's beauty will last no longer than a summer's day, despite the poet's proud boast.
Sonnet 29
1. To be in disgrace with fortune is presumably to be not favoured by her.
To be in disgrace (in) men's eyes - this possibly refers to
some form of public disgrace, either real or imaginary.
2. beweep = weep for, bewail; Like bewail and beseem, the
word has an archaic and biblical flavour.
my outcast state = my condition of being a social outcast. The
condition is probably exaggerated for the sake of effect, and to emphasise that the speaker sees everything in a gloomy light.
3. deaf heaven - Heaven (God) turns a deaf ear to his
complaints and laments. The parallel is drawn with Job in the Old Testament, who was cast out on a dung heap and bewept
his mournful state.
bootless = to no avail, achieving nothing.
4. And look upon myself - as the outcast contemplates his own fallen
state.
curse my fate - another echo from the Book of Job in the
Bible: After this Job opened his mouth and cursed his day. And Job spake and said:
Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, 'There is a man child
conceived'. Let that day be darkness, let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it. etc.
Job.III.1-4.
5. Wishing myself to be like one who is more richly endowed
with all manner of blessings, including wealth.
6. Featured like him, like him = with features like this
person, like this second person having friends, like this third, desiring his skills (line 7) etc.
7. this man's art = the skill that one particular person has;
that man's scope = the capability, range, mental ability that another particular person has.
8. It is unspecified what he most enjoys, but evidently, in his
despondency, things which ought to give him enjoyment do not do so.
9. in these thoughts = while I am engaged in these thoughts myself almost despising - and almost considering myself to be
despicable for being so cast down.
10.Haply = by chance, by a happy stroke of luck;
my state = my mental state, with a suggestion also that his
fortune, or the state of affairs in which he finds himself, improves.
11. There is an echo of this in Cym.II.iii.20-1
Hark! hark the lark at heaven's gate sings,
And Phoebus 'gins arise...
12. sullen = gloomy, dark, miserable; From sullen earth - the phrase may be taken both with this
and with the preceding line. The lark rises from sullen earth, and it also sings hymns which rise up from the earth to the gate
of heaven, or, as it sings, it rises from earth towards heaven.
sings - the subject is the lark, but also the poet's soul, which
has been liberated by his thinking of his beloved.
13. thy sweet love remembered = when I have called to
mind your love, when your sweet love springs up again in my memory.
14. The primary meaning is that 'I am happier than a
king could be, and therefore have no wish to swap places with him.'
Sonnet 130
A typical sonnet of the time which uses lofty comparisons to praise a beloved
idol is given below. There are many others, and the tradition of fulsome praise in this vein stretches back to Petrarch and his sonnets to Laura.
With a deftness of touch that takes away any sting that might otherwise arise
from implied criticism of other sonneteers, the poet satirises the tradition of comparing one's beloved to all things beautiful under the sun, and to things
divine and immortal as well. It is often said that the praise of his mistress is so
negative that the reader is left with the impression that she is almost unlovable.
On the contrary, although the octet makes many negative comparisons, the sestet contrives to make one believe that the sound of her voice is sweeter than
any music, and that she far outdistances any goddess in her merely human beauties and her mortal approachability.
Line 1: A traditional comparison. Shakespeare uses it himself in the
sonnets to the youth:
Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass
And scarcely greet me with that sun thine eye, 49
2. Coral - In Shakespeare's day only the red variety would have
been generally available. OED.1.a gives the following information: Historically, and in earlier literature and folk-lore, the name
belongs to the beautiful red coral, an arborescent species, found in the Red Sea and Mediterranean, prized from times of antiquity
for ornamental purposes, and often classed among precious stones. The comparison of lips with coral was commonplace. lips
here could be read as singular or plural.
3. Skin and breasts were often described as whiter than
snow, compared to pearl and ivory. The use of the word 'dun' (brown like a cow
or mouse) brings the reader down to earth with a bump. Logically, since snow is white, one should accept that her breasts
were dun coloured, i.e. somewhat brownish. Whether this confirms or not that his mistress was truly dark seems doubtful, for the most likely
cause of the claim here to her darkness is that of being deliberately provocative. Skin is never as white as snow, or as lilies,
therefore to countermand the extravagant claims of other poets by a simple declaration of something closer to
reality might jolt everyone to a truer appraisal of love and the experience of loving.
4. If hairs be wires - hair was often compared to golden wires or
threads. A Renaissance reader would not have visualised wires industrial objects. Its main use at the time would have been in jewellery and
lavish embroidery. The shock here is not in the wires themselves (a sign of beauty) but in the fact that they are black.
5. White, red and damasked are the first three varieties of rose
described in Gerard's Herbal, and it appears that there were only these three
colours. The damask rose was pinkish coloured.
6. Her cheeks have roses growing in them.
7. In the traditional world of sonneteering the beloved's breath
smelled sweeter than all perfumes. It was part of the
courtly tradition
of love to declare (and believe) that the goddess whom one adored
had virtually no human qualities. All her qualities were divine.
8. that from my mistress reeks - The word
used to be associated with steamy, sweaty and unsavoury smells.
9. See note below.
10. Curiously, these two lines (9-10) almost express the opposite of
their exact meaning. One is tempted to read 'I love to hear her speak,
for the sound is far more pleasing than music to my ear'. In fact that is
almost a stronger meaning than the superficial and more obvious one,
because the declaration that he loves to hear her surmounts the
obstacle of his prior knowledge that music might be better. However
much better it is he still would much prefer to listen to her voice, and
his knowledge of the superiority of music is irrelevant. The mere
introduction of the term music enlightens the reader's ear to the quality
of experience the poet derives from listening to his beloved.
Technically the effect is perhaps achieved by the directness of the
statement 'I love to hear her speak', which works in the same way as
the bold and breathtaking declarations made earlier to the youth - for
I love you so, dear my love you know, etc. The whole effect is then
consolidated by the pleasing sound of music which follows.
11. I admit that I never saw a goddess walking by. to go = to walk,
as the next line confirms.
12. 'My beloved is human, a goddess with earthly feet'. The poet is
asserting that divine comparisons are not relevant, for his beloved is
beautiful without being a goddess.
13. rare = precious, superb, of fine and unusual quality. The word
has more of the sense of something wonderful and rich than in its
modern uses.
Despite not being a goddess his beloved may be as rare to him as if
she were Cleopatra.
14. As any she belied = as any woman who is belied.
belied = (who is) falsely portrayed. OED.2 defines belie as 'to tell lies
about, to calumniate with false statements'
false compare = false and deceptive comparisons, insincerities.
compare could also hint at 'compeer', one who is comparable, on an
equal footing.
