Shakespeare’s sonnets

Shakespeare’s sonnets 154 of them appear to tell the story of love complicated by rivalry between two men. The dark lady of Shakespeare’s sonnets… A bit of background! • There were no dictionaries until 1604! This made language used in that era very fluid. • Many studied Rhetoric (To speak persuasively) • Poets and playwrights experimented endlessly with words, phrases and imagery. • Free to make up words, to adopt new ones and to change old meanings to new ones. And there’s more… • If a word didn’t exist, Shakespeare remoulded an old one or made up a new one to fit his imaginative and dramatic needs. • Shakespeare’s fascination with dramatic language: the power of words to fire the imaginations, persuade the intellect, to move the emotions. Dramatic language ‘Suit the action to the word, the word to the action’ • • • • • • • His theatre Stage Magic Creating atmosphere and setting through language. Intensely active and physical, pulsating with vibrant energy. Inbuilt stage directions. Evoke Imagery For example: Grief and Loss: ‘Death lies upon her like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of all the field’ Imagery • The use of emotionally charged words and phrases which conjure up vivid mental pictures in the imagination. ‘ Why what’s the matter, That you have such a February face, So full of frost, of storm, and cloudiness’ • Imagery from nature And… • • • • Imagery can employ: Simile Metaphor Personification ‘ She never told her love But let concealment like a worm I’th’bud Feed on her damask cheek. She pined in thought, And with green and yellow melancholy She sat like Patience on a monument Smiling at grief’ Ready for some more? • Antihesis! • The opposition of words and phrases against each other. • ‘To be or not to be…’ • ‘To be’ is the thesis, ‘not to be ‘ is the antihesis. • The essence of drama is conflict. • ‘The more I love, the more he hateth me To sue to live, I find I seek to die’ Repetition • Dramatic force. • Repeated words, phrases, rhythms and sounds (rhyme, alliteration, assonance) add to the emotional intensity of moment or scene. • ‘Thou;lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never’ • Lists Alliteration, Assonance and Onomatopoeia • ‘More a matter for a May morning!’ • ‘What lusty trumpet thus doth summon us?’ •‘ The murmering surge, ‘That on th’unnumbered idle pebble chafes’ Rhyme • Uses rhyme in songs, prologues and epilogues, masques and plays within plays. • Blank verse • Strong rhymed couplets for exits • Sometimes rhyme occurs in shared speech to express shared emotion: Juliet: ‘O now be gone, more light and light it grows Romeo: More light and light, more dark and dark our woes Lists • Accumulate words and phrases like a list. • Increased dramatic effect by intensifying description, atmosphere or argument. • ‘Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder’s fork, and blind worm’s sting, Lizards leg, and howlet’s sting,’ Verse • It was expected! • Verse is written in iambic pentameter • Five stressed (/) syllables alternate with five unstressed (X) syllables, giving a tensyllable line. • X / X / X / X / X / But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? • The weight of stress can vary and the spaces and pauses in a line can be of different length. Just as the human heartbeat is not exactly regular, but has tiny unnoticed variations, so iambic pentameter is a human, not a mechanical measure. Yep, we’re still on Iambic P! • Rhythm that is exactly regular can become dogged! • Shakespeare sometimes varies the rhythmic pattern to include more or fewer than ten syllables. • Not boring or repetitive • For example: / / / / / Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more / / xx x Tetrameter • A verse line with four stresses is called tetrameter (tetra=four) • Common rhythm of nursery rhymes. • Shakespeare uses it for songs e.g. the witches’ chants from Macbeth. Unpunctuated lines but soft what light through yonder window breaks it is the east and Juliet is the sun arise fair sun and kill the envious moon who is already sick and pale with grief that thou her maid art far more fair than she (usually five stressed syllables in each iambic pentameter line, but because Shakespeare used verse so flexibly, many lines do not have a perfectly regular rhythm.) Self- persuasion • Thoughts of the protagonist. Normally displayed through a solioquy. Bombast • Boastful or ranting language: ‘The raging rocks And shivering shocks Shall break the locks Or prison gates’ Overview • First published in 1609 • Shakespeare writes in praise of a ‘fair youth’ • Some critics argue that this is a young man for whom the writer had an infatuation. • Adapts Sonnet structure, writing in iambic pentameter, arranged as three quatrains, each with an abab rhyme scheme and a rhyming couplet at the end. Petrachan Sonnets • Express intense feelings of love, often to woo a subject, • Shakespeare uses a series of metaphors to compare the beauty of the boy to the beauty of nature. • Fragility of May Blossom which he can immortalize in his poetry. Sonnet 18 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 dimmed, And every fair from fair sometime decli nes, By chance or natures changing course untrimmed; But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st, Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st. So long as men can beathe or eyes can see So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. Rhyming couplet celebrates poet’s admiration for the young man and highlights sig of verse Ist person narrative Clear voice Question engages the reader Repetition of the premodifier here adds emphasis to the boy’s beauty which is considered to outshine that of a summer’s day. A series of comparisons highlight negative or fleeting aspects of nature’s beauty How does Shakespeare present the idea of the constant, unceasing beauty here? Direct address Personal nature of the theme Ref to death and rep of ‘eternal’ suggests what? Explore sonnets 90 and 130 plus ‘My love is like to Ice’ by Spenser • AO1 • What thoughts and feelings are Spenser (my love is like to Ice) and Shakespeare expressing in each of these sonnets? Trace the train of thought in each poem. Support your answer with quotations and analysis. • AO2 • With only 14 lines in which to express an idea, the poet cannot waste time and words in introductions. How has the subject matter of each sonnet affected the poet’s choices of language?