New Sonnets.Indd

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

New Sonnets.Indd Contents ____________________________________________ About This Volume . vii THE AUTHOR & HIS WORK Biography of William Shakespeare . 3 Shakespeare the Poet . 7 Introduction to Shakespeare's Sonnets . 14 The Lasting Allure of Shakespeare's Sonnets . 18 HISTORICAL & LITERARY CONTEXTS English Poetry in the Sixteenth Century . 29 Does Shakespeare's Life Matter? . 41 The Sins of the Sonnets . 51 Shakespeare (Not?) Our Contemporary: His Sonnets and More Recent Examples . 65 CLOSE READINGS OF 25 SONNETS Sonnet 1 . 75 Sonnet 18 . 77 Sonnet 19 . 79 Sonnet 20 . 81 Sonnet 29 . 83 Sonnet 30 . 85 Sonnet 31 . 87 Sonnet 53 . 89 Sonnet 54 . 91 Sonnet 57 . 93 Sonnet 73 . 95 Sonnet 90 . 97 Sonnet 94 . 99 Sonnet 97 . 101 Sonnet 98 . 103 Sonnet 102 . 105 Sonnet 104 . 107 Sonnet 106 . 109 Sonnet 109 . 111 Sonnet 116 . 113 Sonnet 129 . 115 Sonnet 130 . 117 Sonnet 141 . 119 v Sonnet 146 . 121 Sonnet 151 . 123 CRITICAL READINGS 1: FORM & TECHNIQUE The Form of Shakespeare's Sonnets . 127 Vocabulary and Chronology: The Case of Shakespeare's Sonnets . 137 Sound and Meaning in Shakespeare's Sonnets . 149 Ambiguous Speaker and Storytelling in Shakespeare's Sonnets . 170 Secrets of the Dedication to Shakespeare's Sonnets . 183 CRITICAL READINGS 2: MAIN THEMES Four Pivotal Sonnets: Sonnets 20, 62, 104, 129 . 195 Shakespeare's Sonnets and the History of Sexuality . 207 Shylock in Love: Economic Metaphors in Shakespeare's Sonnets . 223 Hoarding the Treasure and Squandering the Truth: Giving and Posessing in Shakespeare's Sonnets to the Young Man. .235 Without Remainder: Ruins and Tombs in Shakespeare's Sonnets . 245 Ecosystemic Shakespeare: Vegetable Memorabilia in the Sonnets . 261 The Social Masochism of Shakespeare's Sonnets . 266 Love's Usury, Poet's Debt: Borrowing and Mimesis in Shakespeare's Sonnets . 275 Who Bore the Canopy in Sonnet 125? . 282 RESOURCES Chronology of Shakespeare's Life . 289 Works by William Shakespeare . 292 Editions of the Sonnets . 293 Guide to Free Online Reources on the Sonnets . 294 Guide to Literary Criticism on the Sonnets . 301 General Bibliography . 308 All Sonnets . 311 Contributors . 340 Index . 342 vi.
Recommended publications
  • Booklet Shakespeare 3
    SONNET 1 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. 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 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. SONNET 29 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, Featur'd 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.
    [Show full text]
  • Poetry-II-Teacher-Sample-3Rd-Ed.Pdf
    Contents Contents How to Use This Study Guide with the Text & Literature Notebook ......5 Notes & Instructions to Teacher ....................................................................7 Taking With Us What Matters .......................................................................9 Four Stages to the Central One Idea ............................................................13 How to Mark a Book ......................................................................................18 THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE PERIOD Introduction ................................................................................................... 22 Basic Features & Background ....................................................................... 24 Queen Elizabeth On Monsieur’s Departure ............................................................................. 30 Speech to the Troops at Tilbury ..................................................................... 33 Edmund Spenser – from The Faerie Queene, Canto I ..............................................37 Christopher Marlowe – The Passionate Shepherd to His Love ...............................47 Sir Walter Raleigh – The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd .......................................50 Sir Philip Sidney – Sonnet 31 ...............................................................................................54 George Peele – A Farewell to Arms .....................................................................................57 Robert Southwell – The Burning Babe .............................................................................60
    [Show full text]
  • Understanding Shakespeare – Sonnets 116 and 130 Grade Ten
    2-10th pages 68-257.12 8/6/04 11:41 AM Page 244 Understanding Shakespeare – Sonnets 116 and 130 Grade Ten Skill Focus Levels of Thinking Remember Understand Apply Analyze Close Reading Grammar Composition Close Reading Reading Strategies Types (modes) Inference Expository Paraphrase definition Summary Literary Elements Diction connotation denotation vocabulary Theme Figures of Speech Metaphor Sound Devices Rhyme Rhythm Literary Techniques Irony Literary Forms Verse Materials and Resources • “Sonnet 116” by William Shakespeare • “Sonnet 130” by William Shakespeare Lesson Introduction Even younger students puzzle out much of the meaning of a Shakespearean sonnet and enjoy listening for rhythm and rhyme patterns. This kind of activity helps students become aware of the sound devices an author uses to lend music to a text and to connect meaningful words and phrases through the use of sound. In order to do the first two activities, students will need instruction about what a sonnet is and how it is structured. This information can be provided by the teacher or inferred from a group study of several sonnets and their structure. Iambic pentameter is a meter that consists of repeated patterns of unstressed and stressed syllables. An iamb consists of two syllables, the first unstressed, the second stressed. A pattern of five iambs to a line is called iambic pentameter; for example: /When in/ disgrace/ with for/tune and/ men’s eyes/ I all/ alone/ beweep/ my out/cast state..../ 244 2-10th pages 68-257.12 8/6/04 11:41 AM Page 245 Close Reading In these two lines, every second syllable has a heavier stress than that which precedes it.
    [Show full text]
  • Teaching Shakespeare's Sonnets
    Teaching Shakespeare’s Sonnets: time as fracture in sonnets 18, 60 and 63 Miguel Martínez López UNIVERSITY OF GRANADA Literary studies on the Sonnets before the seventies were usually part of larger works on Sha- kespeare or on the sonnet. Specialization and detailed analyses of individual and groups of sonnets is absolutely necessary before attempting any further generalizations, which so far have led nowhere.1 In this paper I suggest a possible approach to the discussion of Shakespeare’s poetic stance as regards the intellectual metamorphosis of human apprehension of time at the dawn of the Modern Age. My reading and analysis of three of the «time-sonnets» (nos. 18, 60 & 73) is set within the context of a final-year or graduate class, minimally fluent in rhetoric, in basic medieval and Renaissance philosophy and in the intellectual history of this period.2 My central contention is that Shakespeare superbly epitomizes in his poetry and drama the fear of death resulting from a radical change in the apprehension of time: time passus (the form typical of the M. A.) becomes now time fractus.3 Humankind is and has always been fearful of death (the ultimate consequence of the passing of time) but there is a historical period -broadly between the mid-fourteenth century and the mid-seventeenth century- in which existential anguish has been at its highest. For three centuries, a series of endless calamities assaulted Europe: the Black Death, the Hundred-Year War, the invasions of the Turks, the Great Schism of the Reformation… . In the Autumn of the M.
    [Show full text]
  • Shakespeare Sonnets Program
    Shakespeare Sonnets Caltech Playreaders, March 16, 2021 Directed by Ann K Lindsey Index: Introductions with Joanne Doyle and Ann Lindsey Part 1 Page 2….. Sonnet 20 sung by John Davidson to Music by Rufus Wainwright Sonnet 128 recited by Greta Davidson Page 3….. Sonnet 8 recited by Diana St James Sonnet 100 recited by Barbie Insua Part 2 Page 4….. Sonnet 105 recited by Cara King Sonnet 143 recited by Diana St James Page 5….. Sonnet 116 recited by Todd Brun Sonnet 25 recited by Carol Elaine Cyr Page 6….. Sonnet 126 recited by Kathryn Bikle Page 7….. Part 3 Hamlet's Soliloquy recited by Tiffany Kim 9 minute pre-taped discussion moderated by Kathryn Bikle Part 4 Page 8…... Sonnet 23 recited by Kathryn Bikle Sonnet 53 recited by Barbie Insua Page 9…... Sonnet 43 recited by Douglas Smith Sonnet 30 recited by Greta Davidson Page 10…. Sonnet 66 recited by Carol Elaine Cyr Part 5 Page 10….. Sonnet 56 recited by Douglas Smith Page 11….. Sonnet 33 recited by Cara King Sonnet 40 sung by Phoebe Kellogg to her original music Page 12….. Sonnet 87 recited by Todd Brun 19 minute pre-taped discussion moderated by Kathryn Bikle Upcoming Caltech Playreaders productions End credits Out-takes Page 2 of 12 Part 1 Sonnet 20 sung by John Davidson 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, Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
    [Show full text]
  • Sonnet 30 / Sonnet 75
    Directions: Read the following Shakespearean Sonnet. Mark the rhyme scheme next to the line of the poem. Then answer the questions below. 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 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. 1. What is being described in each section of the poem? 1st Quatrain 2nd Quatrain 3rd Quatrain Couplet 2. Identify literary devices in the poem. You can put the line number and type of device. _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ 3. What idea is the author trying to convey? ______________________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________________
    [Show full text]
  • How to Read a Sonnet Two Quatrains Is the Octave; the by a Couplet, As in WS 73 Last Six Lines Is the Sestet
    Download this brochure as a PDF from VernBarnet.com 4 pages EXTERNAL SCAFFOLDING INTERNAL STRUCTURES (apart from meaning) (pattern of meaning) he “English” or Shakespearean” Within the external sonnet form, T sonnet consists of 14 lines of William Shakespeare (WS) draws iambic pentameter (you can easily his themes in various ways. speak one line in one breath) with the line end-rimes in a pattern of A. The same idea is pre- sented in three quatrains, abab-cdcd : efef-gg. Each set of four lines is a quatrain and the last two each with a different meta- lines are called a couplet, indented phor, a different angle on How to Read a Sonnet in Shakepeare’s Sonnets. The first the same theme, followed two quatrains is the octave; the by a couplet, as in WS 73 last six lines is the sestet. (dying day, dying year, in Shakespearean form An iamb is a set of two syllables dying fire, love now) and the first of which is unstressed and my 30. which means reading aloud the second stressed. Pentameter is B. The octave presents a a line of five feet. (A unit of rhythm in poetry is called a foot from po- theme, the third quatrain T summarizes it, and the cou- etry’s early association with dance; a line of poetry is like a measure of plet condenses it once again, as in WS 55 (you live in my T music.) Thus a line of iambic pen- tameter sounds lines) and my 15. T da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM.
    [Show full text]
  • Poetry As Correspondence in Early Modern England
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2017 Unfolding Verse: Poetry As Correspondence In Early Modern England Dianne Marie Mitchell University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Recommended Citation Mitchell, Dianne Marie, "Unfolding Verse: Poetry As Correspondence In Early Modern England" (2017). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2477. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2477 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2477 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Unfolding Verse: Poetry As Correspondence In Early Modern England Abstract This project recovers a forgotten history of Renaissance poetry as mail. At a time when trends in English print publication and manuscript dissemination were making lyric verse more accessible to a reading public than ever before, writers and correspondents created poetic objects designed to reach individual postal recipients. Drawing on extensive archival research, “Unfolding Verse” examines versions of popular poems by John Donne, Ben Jonson, Mary Wroth, and others which look little like “literature.” Rather, these verses bear salutations, addresses, folds, wax seals, and other signs of transmission through the informal postal networks of early modern England. Neither verse letters nor “epistles,” the textual artifacts I call “letter-poems” proclaim their participation in a widespread social
    [Show full text]
  • The Subversive Nature of the Dark Lady Sonnets: a Reading of Sonnets 129 and 144
    Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie occidentale [online] ISSN 2499-1562 Vol. 49 – Settembre 2015 [print] ISSN 2499-2232 «My Female Evil» The Subversive Nature of the Dark Lady Sonnets: a Reading of Sonnets 129 and 144 Camilla Caporicci (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München, Deutschland) Abstract Shakespeare’s opposition towards some aspects of Stoic and Neoplatonic doctrines and religious fanaticism, particularly Puritanism, can be found in many of his plays. However, rather than focusing on the dramatic output, this essay will concentrate on Shakespeare’s Sonnets. The strongly subversive nature of the Dark Lady section is especially notable, although modern critical opinion is generally less inclined to acknowledge its subversive philosophical message because of the supposedly more ‘personal’ nature of lyrical expression compared to the dramatic. In fact, critics have generally chosen to focus their attention on the Fair Youth section, more or less intentionally ignoring the Sonnets’ second part, summarily dismissed as an example of parodic inversion of the Petrarchan model, thus avoiding an examination of its profound revolutionary character, that is – an implicit rejection of the Christian and Neo-platonic basis of the sonnet tradi- tion. Through a close reading of two highly meaningful sonnets, this essay will show that, in the poems dedicated to the Dark Lady, Shakespeare calls into question, through clear terminological reference, the very foundations of Christian and Neo-platonic thought – such as the dichotomous nature of creation, the supremacy of the soul over the body, the conception of sin et cetera – in order to show their internal inconsistencies, and to propose instead a new ontological paradigm, based on materialistic and Epicurean principles, that proclaims reality to consist of an indissoluble union of spirit and matter.
    [Show full text]
  • Exploring Shakespeare's Sonnets with SPARSAR
    Linguistics and Literature Studies 4(1): 61-95, 2016 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/lls.2016.040110 Exploring Shakespeare’s Sonnets with SPARSAR Rodolfo Delmonte Department of Language Studies & Department of Computer Science, Ca’ Foscari University, Italy Copyright © 2016 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Abstract Shakespeare’s Sonnets have been studied by rhetorical devices. Most if not all of these facets of a poem literary critics for centuries after their publication. However, are derived from the analysis of SPARSAR, the system for only recently studies made on the basis of computational poetry analysis which has been presented to a number of analyses and quantitative evaluations have started to appear international conferences [1,2,3] - and to Demo sessions in and they are not many. In our exploration of the Sonnets we its TTS “expressive reading” version [4,5,6]1. have used the output of SPARSAR which allows a Most of a poem's content can be captured considering full-fledged linguistic analysis which is structured at three three basic levels or views on the poem itself: one that covers macro levels, a Phonetic Relational Level where phonetic what can be called the overall sound pattern of the poem - and phonological features are highlighted; a Poetic and this is related to the phonetics and the phonology of the Relational Level that accounts for a poetic devices, i.e. words contained in the poem - Phonetic Relational View.
    [Show full text]
  • Sonnet 30 to the Sessions 11 February 1601
    THE PRISON YEARS OXFORD SUMMONED TO THE TRIAL DAY FOUR IN THE TOWER Sonnet 30 To The Sessions 11 February 1601 Edward de Vere is “summoned” to be a judge at the “Sessions” or treason trial of Essex and Southampton, to be held in Westminster Hall eight days from now. Oxford is filled with grief over the “losses” suffered by his royal son – loss of honor, loss of liberty, loss of the crown, and likely even the loss of his life by execution. Oxford’s expression of overwhelming sorrow demonstrates that, in life itself, he suffered every bit as greatly as do the characters of his plays. When his son by the Queen was born, Oxford had been forced to "pay" by being unable to acknowledge him. Now he must "new pay" for his son by making a crucial bargain with Robert Cecil and King James of Scotland, who, barring civil war around the throne, will become James I of England. Sonnet 30 Translation When to the Sessions of sweet silent thought When to the Trial with royal secret thoughts I summon up remembrance of things past, I am summoned to remember past things, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, I sigh the lack of your rights that I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time’s And cry anew over my son’s wasted royal time: waste: Then can I drown an eye (unused to flow) Then I can weep tears (like never before) For precious friends hid in death’s dateless For my royal son imprisoned, facing death and night, disgraced forever, And weep afresh love’s long-since cancelled And weep again over his royalty’s cancellation, woe, And moan th’ expense of many a vanished sight.
    [Show full text]
  • Shakespeare and the Master Mistress an Analysis And
    Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Institut für Anglistik / Amerikanistik Sommersemester 2000 PS: Shakespeare Seminar Dozentin: Dr. Brigitte Schnabel Semesterarbeit Shakespeare and the Master-Mistress - An Analysis and Interpretation of Sonnet 20 with special regard to its homoerotic content Verfasser: Rainer Bruns XXX XXX XXX 4. Fachsemester Matrikel-Nr.XXX 1 Contents Nr. Topic Page Contents 1 1. Introduction 2 2. Analysis and interpretation of sonnet 20 3 2.1. Form 3 2.2. Close reading 3 2.3. Summarizing interpretation 9 3. The biographical background - Shakespeare and 10 the young man 4. The question of homosexuality 13 4.1. Homosexuality in the Renaissance 13 4.2. Publishing and reception history of the sonnets 15 5. Bibliography 17 1. Introduction The homoeroticism expressed in Shakespeare´s sonnets has been hotly discussed for over 200 years. Shakespeare, British national hero, god of drama, father of eight children, symbol of "high culture" - a homosexual? Sonnet 20 plays a central role in this debate. Some use it as evidence proving the poets "innocence" others, however, see homosexual desires uttered in it. Firstly, this work will analyse and interpret sonnet 20. The "close reading" will be accompanied by a German translation of the author of 2 this work. Special attention shall be paid to the ambiguities expressed through puns or other tropes and figures. Secondly, a look at the biographical background will be taken, notably at the speculations about the identity of the adressee, the young man. This will be done in order to add new aspects to the interpretation. The last part will be about homosexuality.
    [Show full text]