SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS - SOME CONCEPTS

● Twain's definition of Shakespeare’s sonnets, "something that everybody wants to have read and nobody
wants to read".

● Shakespeare modernized the form of the sonnet, and transformed it from a stylised, courtly love repetitive
model to a fluent and flexible form that could turn itself to any subject. This isn't to diminish the contribution of
his forebears and contemporaries; but what distinguished Shakespeare from someone like, say, Sir John
Davies, was the maturity of his means. None of this was accomplished by flailing "innovation", and this, I
think, is the real poetic miracle of the sonnets.

● The entirety of Shakespeare's sonnets were not formally published until 1609 (and even then, they were
published without the author's knowledge)

● While contemporary criticism remains interested in the question of whether or not the sonnets are
autobiographical, the sonnets, taken either wholly or individually, are first and foremost a work of literature, to
be read and discussed both for their poetic quality and their narrative tale. Their appeal rests not so much in
the fact that they may shed some light on Shakespeare's life, nor even that they were written by him; rather,
their greatness lies in the richness and the range of subjects found in them.

● When analyzed as characters, the subjects of the sonnets are usually referred to as the Fair Youth, the Rival
Poet, and the Dark Lady. The speaker expresses admiration for the Fair Youth's beauty, and—if reading the
sonnets in chronological order as published—later has an affair with the Dark Lady, then so does the Fair
Youth.

● It is not known whether the poems and their characters are fiction or autobiographical; scholars who find the
sonnets to be autobiographical have attempted to identify the characters with historical individuals.

● The collection contains Sonnet 18 – ‘Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?’ – described by many critics
as the most romantic poem ever written.

● It is difficult to appreciate today how important Shakespeare’s sonnets were. At the time of writing, the
Petrarchan sonnet form was extremely popular … and predictable! They focused on unattainable love in a
very conventional way, but Shakespeare’s sonnets managed to stretch the strictly-obeyed conventions of
sonnet writing into new areas.

● Almost all of Shakespeare’s sonnets are love poems. The Sonnets philosophize, celebrate, attack, plead,
and express pain, longing, and despair, all in a tone of voice that rarely rises above a reflective murmur.
Readers will often find the speaker reflecting upon: Love, His age and the passage of time, Youth, Absence,
Beauty, Marriage, Lust and passion, Betrayal and infidelity.

● Shakespeare’s depiction of love is far from courtly – it is complex, earthy and sometimes controversial: he
plays with gender roles, love and evil are closely entwined and he speaks openly about sex.

● As sonnets, their main concern is ‘love’, but they also reflect upon time, change, aging, lust, absence,
infidelity and the problematic gap between ideal and reality when it comes to the person you love.

● All the sonnets are spoken as if in an inner monologue or dialogue, and all within the tight structure of the
English sonnet form.

● In Shakespeare's sonnets, the rhyme pattern is abab cdcd efef gg, with the final couplet used to summarize
the previous 12 lines or present a surprise ending.

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● In Shakespeare's sonnets, the rhyme pattern is abab cdcd efef gg, with the final couplet used to summarize
the previous 12 lines or present a surprise ending.

● The rhythmic pattern of the sonnets is the iambic pentameter. Shakespeare uses five of these in each line,
which makes it a pentameter.

● Although Shakespeare's sonnets can be divided into different sections numerous ways, the most apparent
division involves Sonnets 1–126, in which the poet strikes up a relationship with a young man, and Sonnets
127–154, which are concerned with the poet's relationship with a woman, variously referred to as the Dark
Lady, or as his mistress.

● In Sonnets 1–17, he tries to convince the handsome young man to marry and beget children so that the
youth's incredible beauty will not die when the youth dies.

● Starting in Sonnet 18, when the youth appears to reject this argument for procreation, the poet glories in the
young man's beauty and takes consolation in the fact that his sonnets will preserve the youth's beauty, much
like the youth's children would.

● By Sonnet 26, perhaps becoming more attached to the young man than he originally intended, the poet feels
isolated and alone when the youth is absent. He cannot sleep. Emotionally exhausted, he becomes
frustrated by what he sees as the youth's inadequate response to his affection. The estrangement between
the poet and the young man continues at least through Sonnet 58 and is marked by the poet's fluctuating
emotions for the youth: One moment he is completely dependent on the youth's affections, the next moment
he angrily lashes out because his love for the young man is unrequited.

● Philosophizing about time preoccupies the poet, who tells the young man that time and immortality cannot be
conquered; however, the youth ignores the poet and seeks other friendships, including one with the poet's
mistress (Sonnets 40–42) and another with a rival poet (Sonnets 79–87). Expectedly, the relationship
between the youth and this new poet greatly upsets the sonnets' poet, who lashes out at the young man and
then retreats into despondency, in part because he feels his poetry is lackluster and cannot compete with the
new forms of poetry being written about the youth.

● The second, shorter grouping of Sonnets 127–154 involves the poet's sexual relationship with the Dark Lady,
a married woman with whom he becomes infatuated. Similar to his friendship with the young man, this
relationship fluctuates between feelings of love, hate, jealousy, and contempt.

● The sonnets end with the poet admitting that he is a slave to his passion for the woman and can do nothing
to curb his lust. Shakespeare turns the traditional idea of a romantic sonnet on its head in this series,
however, as his Dark Lady is not an alluring beauty and does not exhibit the perfection that lovers typically
ascribe to their beloved.

● The ‘Fair Youth’ sonnets Sonnets 1 to 126 seem to be addressed to a young man, socially superior to the
speaker. The first 17 sonnets encourage this youth to marry and father children, because otherwise ‘[t]hy end
is truth’s and beauty’s doom and date’ (Sonnet 14) – that is, his beauty will die with him. After this, the
sonnets diversify in their subjects. Some erotically celebrate the ‘master mistress of my passion’ (Sonnet 20),
while others reflect upon the ‘lovely boy’ (Sonnet 126) as a cause of anguish, as the speaker desperately
wishes for his behaviour to be different to the cruelty that it sometimes is. ‘For if you were by my unkindness
shaken, / As I by yours’, laments the speaker of Sonnet 120, ‘you have passed a hell of time’.

● The ‘Dark Lady’ sonnets Sonnets 127 to 152 seem to be addressed to a woman, the so-called ‘Dark Lady’
of Shakespearean legend. This woman is elusive, often tyrannous, and causes the speaker great pain and
shame. Many of these sonnets reflect on the paradox of the ‘fair’ lady’s ‘dark’ complexion. As Sonnet 127
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 punningly puts it, ‘black was not counted fair’ in Shakespeare’s era, which favoured fair hair and light
complexions. This woman’s eyes and hair are ‘raven black’ – and yet the speaker finds her most alluring. The
two final sonnets (Sonnets 153 and 154) focus on the classical god Cupid, and playfully detail desire and
longing. They do not seem to directly relate to the rest of the collection.

● Most are also aware that only about 25 of the 154 sonnets specify the sex of the beloved, and that in the
century following the Sonnets’ publication, readers who copied individual sonnets into their manuscript
collections gave them titles that show, for example, that sonnets such as Sonnet 2 were seen as carpe diem
(“seize the day”) poems addressed “To one that would die a maid.”

● The first 17 poems, traditionally called the procreation sonnets, are 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 the speaker's love for the young man; brood upon loneliness, death, and the transience of
life; seem to criticize the young man for preferring a rival poet; express ambiguous feelings for the speaker's
mistress; and pun on the poet's name. The final two sonnets are allegorical treatments of Greek epigrams
referring to the "little love-god" Cupid.

● Fair Youth The "Fair Youth" is the unnamed young man addressed by the devoted poet in the greatest
sequence of the sonnets (1–126). The young man is handsome, self-centred, universally admired and much
sought after. The sequence begins with the poet urging the young man to marry and father children (sonnets
1–17). It continues with the friendship developing with the poet's loving admiration, which at times is
homoerotic in nature. Then comes a set of betrayals by the young man, as he is seduced by the Dark Lady,
and they maintain a liaison (sonnets 133, 134 & 144), all of which the poet struggles to abide. It concludes
with the poet's own act of betrayal, resulting in his independence from the fair youth (sonnet 152).

● The identity of the Fair Youth has been the subject of speculation among scholars. One popular theory is that
he was Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton; this is based in part on the idea that his physical
features, age, and personality might fairly match the young man in the sonnets. He was both an admirer and
patron of Shakespeare and was considered one of the most prominent nobles of the period. It is also noted
that Shakespeare's 1593 poem Venus and Adonis is dedicated to Southampton and, in that poem a young
man, Adonis, is encouraged by the goddess of love, Venus, to beget a child, which is a theme in the sonnets.

● The Dark Lady (Shakespeare) The Dark Lady sequence (sonnets 127–152) is the most defiant of the sonnet
tradition. The sequence distinguishes itself from the Fair Youth sequence with its overt sexuality (Sonnet
151). The Dark Lady is so called because she has black hair and "dun" skin. The Dark Lady suddenly
appears (Sonnet 127), and she and the speaker of the sonnets, the poet, are in a sexual relationship. She is
not aristocratic, young, beautiful, intelligent or chaste. Her complexion is muddy, her breath "reeks", and she
is ungainly when she walks. The relationship strongly parallels Touchstone's pursuit of Audrey in As You Like
It. The Dark Lady presents an adequate receptor for male desire. She is celebrated in cocky terms that would
be offensive to her, not that she would be able to read or understand what is said. Soon the speaker rebukes
her for enslaving his fair friend (sonnet 133). He can't abide the triangular relationship, and it ends with him
rejecting her. As with the Fair Youth, there have been many attempts to identify her with a real historical
individual. Lucy Negro, Mary Fitton, Emilia Lanier, Elizabeth Wriothesley, and others have been suggested.

● The Rival Poet The Rival Poet's identity remains a mystery. If Shakespeare's patron and friend was
Pembroke, Shakespeare was not the only poet who praised his beauty; Francis Davison did in a sonnet that
is the preface to Davison's quarto A Poetical Rhapsody (1608), which was published just before
Shakespeare's Sonnets. John Davies of Hereford, Samuel Daniel, George Chapman, Christopher Marlowe,
and Ben Jonson are also candidates that find support among clues in the sonnets.

● It may be that the Rival Poet is a composite of several poets through which Shakespeare explores his sense
of being threatened by competing poets. The speaker sees the Rival Poet as competition for fame and
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 patronage. The sonnets most commonly identified as the Rival Poet group exist within the Fair Youth
sequence in sonnets 78–86.

● Direct readings are a bit different. They give us three things, I think: what the poem is saying; what the poem
is saying about us; and what the poem is saying about the author. We can usually get all this without
generating a secondary text, through the simple act of rereading – rereading being what is most distinct
about the act of reading poetry, and the reason poetry books are so thin. We don't read poems as machines
reading the productions of other machines; we naturally posit a vulnerable and fallible human hand behind
them. Indeed we do this as instinctively as we meet the eyes of a stranger when they walk into the room; not
to do so strikes me as perverse, and denies a sound human instinct. Why should we approach the sonnets
any differently?