Shakespeare S Sonnets

Shakespeare’s Sonnets Written mid 1590s, published without authority 1609. The strongest act of Parliamentthat coud be framed would fail to compel readers into [Shakespeare’s sonnets’] service. George Steevens, 1793.

“With this key [the sonnet] Shakespeare unlocked his heart” William Wordsworth “If so, the less Shakespeare he.” Robert Browning

Conventional literary exercise or personal inner life unfolded? 1. His lady black eyed 2. Writes to man not woman (homo-erotic?) 3. Real emotion?

Order of 154 sonnets is not authoritative, though themes evident: Love, need to procreate, jealously, mutability, lady’s coldness, passing of seasons, catalogue of lady’s beauty, poet’s despair, immortality through verse, philosophical speculation—whole range in sonnet cycles.

Shakespeare writing during the 1590s sonnet craze. But his depths of moral and aesthetic contemplation deeper than that of Spenser (Amoretti), Sidney (Astrophel and Stella), et cetera.

Shakespeare’s sonnets generally ignored, rearranged, given titles, combined into longer poems, and altered so that most of those addressed to young man were made to seem addressed to a woman (Benson’s text does this). First reliable text published 1780 by Edmond Malone.

Except for 99, 126, and 145, written in the English Sonnet form of three quatrains and a couplet (Surrey started this). Rhetorical organization follows structural form, and couplet usually ties sonnet to general theme of series.

Immortal Verse 15 18 18

Genius 55 60

Seasons and Lovers 97 98 99

Personal 110 111 112

Acting Imagery 23

Anatomy of Lust 129

Sexual Despair 144