Introduction To Sonnets & Poems Flashcards
Facts and figures related to sonnets and poems.
How many sonnets were published in 1609 ?
154 sonnets were published in a Quarto.
Six additional sonnets that Shakespeare wrote are included in which play.
Romeo and Juliet, Henry V and Love’s Labour’s Lost. Partial sonnet can be found in the Edward III.
Instead of expressing worshipful love for goddess-like yet unobtainable female love-object
Shakespeare introduces a young man. He also introduces the Dark Lady, who is no goddess
Themes of Shakespeare’s sonnets
Passage of time, love, infidelity, jealousy, beauty, mortality.
To whom were his sonnets addressed to ?
The first 126 are addressed to a young man & 127 to 152 are addressed to a woman / the dark mistress.
Shakespeare’s most important model
Sir Philip Sidney’s posthumous 1591 publication ie titled, Syr. P.S. his Astrophel and Stella
Shakespeare’s Sonnets are a dedication to “Mr. W.H.”
Sidney’s nephew & heir, William Herbert (Earl of Pembroke) or Henry Wriothesley (Earl of Southampton), with initials reversed likely possible; Since he was good looking & was the dedicatee of Shakespeare’s long poems.
The first 17 poems or procreation sonnets
Addressed to the young man—urging him to marry and have children in order to immortalize his beauty by passing it to the next generation
Other sonnets express
Speaker’s love for the young man, loneliness, death, transience of life; seem to criticise the young man for preferring a rival poet; express ambiguous feelings for the speaker’s mistress; and pun on the poet’s name.
Speaker’s mistress
The Dark Lady is a woman described in Shakespeare’s sonnets 127–152 is so called because in the poems she has black wiry hair and dark, brown, “dun” coloured skin.
The final two sonnets
Allegorical treatments of Greek epigrams referring to the “little love-god” Cupid.
How was the Quarto published?
Thomas Thorpe was the publisher and George Eld printed the quarto, and the run was divided between the booksellers William Aspley and John Wright
Form and structure of Shakespearean sonnets, or English sonnets, or Elizabethan sonnets
=>The sonnets are of 14 lines
=>Almost all are constructed of three quatrains (four-line stanzas) followed by a final couplet.
=>The sonnets are composed in iambic pentameter
=>The rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
Iambic Pentameter
=>Iambic pentameter is a verse rhythm often used in Shakespeare’s writing.
=>It has 10 syllables per line.
=>Syllables alternate between unstressed and stressed beats, creating this pattern: “de/DUM de/DUM de/DUM de/DUM de/DUM.”
What is Volta (“turn”) ?
Often, at the end of the third quatrain occurs the volta (“turn”), where the mood of the poem shifts, and the poet expresses a turn of thought.
