William Shakespeare. Total Number of Sonnets – One Hundred and Fifty Four

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William Shakespeare. Total Number of Sonnets – One Hundred and Fifty Four

Study material for second semester students CC- IV (section- A) Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence Writer – William Shakespeare. Total number of sonnets – one hundred and fifty four. Publication history- two of Shakespeare’s sonnets (sonnet 138 and 144) were first published in a collection titled The Passionate Pilgrim in the year 1599. Thomas Thorpe in the year 1609 published a quarto edition containing one hundred fifty four sonnets by Shakespeare. Dedication – The sonnet sequence is dedicated to a mysterious Mr. W.H. Division: the first one hundred twenty six sonnets (1-126) are dedicated to an unnamed young man often mentioned as the ‘Fair Youth’. The last two sonnets (153 & 154) are addressed to Cupid and the rest of the sonnets (127-52) are dedicated to a mysterious woman or the Dark Lady. There is a fierce debate regarding the true identity of the ‘Fair Youth’ and the Dark Lady among Shakespeare scholars. Though some scholars propose that either William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke or Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton is most likely the mysterious young man and Mary Fitton is probably the Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence, there is no irrefutable proof and therefore the debate is never resolved. Form – Barring a few exceptions, the sonnets of the sequence are written in Shakespearean sonnet style containing three quatrains and a final couplet. The sonnets generally are written in iambic pentameter. The sonnets follow the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg. Exceptions- sonnet 99 has fifteen lines in stead of fourteen. Sonnet 126 has twelve lines written in the form of six couplets. Sonnet 145 is written in iambic tetrameter in stead of iambic pentameter. Important themes - The pains and pleasures of love, betrayal in love, standards of true beauty, procreation, the destructive nature of time, mortality, old age, rivalry with another poet, the immortality and power of art or verse etc. Other poems of Shakespeare : Apart from the sonnet sequence, Shakespeare also wrote two long narrative poems. They are – Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. .

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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.
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Loves of Comfort and Despair: a Reading of Shakespeare's Sonnet 138 Author(S): Edward A
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