Iii) Shakespeare's Sonnets

(A) Description:

- a collection of 154 poems, dedicated to WH.

- most of them circulated in manuscript for at least eleven years before being printed in the 1609 quarto by T. Thorpe

- there has been much speculation regarding the possible historical personality, based on the initials of in the dedication: WH, taken to mean

- William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke or

- Henry Wriothesley (1573-1642), third Earl of Southampton.

- other speculations regard the identity of the Dark Lady, at one time believed to be Mary Fitton,

- the possible identity of the rival poet, perhaps George Chapman.

(b) Sonnet arrangement:

- Thorpe's arrangement of the sonnets: not certain.

- The sonnets come from two different "sources":

- Sonnets 1-126, dedicated to a young man, "the portfolio sonnets" or the 'sugred sonnets,' (cf. Dover Wilson) have come into Thorpe's possession in an official manner

- Sonnets 127-152, the 'private' or 'secret' sonnets, addressed to a woman are more randomly arranged, and seem to have reached Thorpe indirectly.

The first part (1-126)

- Sonnets 1-17 are addressed to a young man urging him to marry and perpetuate his beauty in his offspring. The poet insists on the difference of age and rank (36, 87, 111, 117) which he laments as a barrier between them.

- in Sonnets 40-42 the young man is forgiven for having stolen the poet's mistress, a sensual fault perhaps mentioned in sonnet 35 and adumbrated in 33-34. (Sonnets 95 and 96, also mentioning a sensual fault, seem to refer, however to another affair)

The second part (127-154)

- most of the sonnets are dedicated to a woman, called the Dark Lady. She is apparently a married woman (152), who eventually betrays the poet with his friend (144). She appears as the bad angel who has tempted the good angel away and resembles the woman mentioned in the sonnets 40-42.

- Sonnet 145 (octosyllabic), and the last two, 153-154, dedicated to Cupid have no apparent connection with the rest.

(c) Characteristics:

- Shakespeare's Sonnets are personal and not merely dramatic exercises. They celebrate a profound and affectionate friendship.

- There is a difference of character, social position and age between the two men, the author seeming by many years senior

(d) Main themes:

- the destructive passage of time in contrast with the eternity of art, especially poetry

- the relativity of human beauty in comparison with eternity of beauty praised in poetry

- the ambivalence of human love which moves between joy and suffering, passion and jealousy, trust and betrayal

- the relativity of friendship and love

- man and his faith in God

Elizabethan Poets. Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)

The Faerie Queene

(i) Structure:

- Book I. The Legend of Holiness is about Red Cross, a great knight and saint, reminding of Christ and of popular pageants' everyman. He redeems the parents of Una (Adam and Eve), slays the Old Dragon and eventually marries his Bride, Una, the True Church (the Church of England). The historical and theological purposes of the poem are more apparent here than elsewhere.

- Book II The Legend of Temperance, describes the control of the passions by the highest powers of the mind. Guyon represents a mixture of temperance and continence. The conflicts in which he is involved occur in the human being, especially his fight against temptation and his attempt to preserve the golden mean

- Book III. The Legend of Chastity, has philosophical moral considerations about love, about its place in the order of the world, and about virginity, an homage paid to Queen Elizabeth, beautiful Belphoebe, who is in charge of the order of things.

- Book IV. The Legend of Friendship addresses the Renaissance mystique of friendship.

- Book V. The Legend of Justicedescribes the difference between justice with and without equity

- Book VI. The Legend of Courtesyspeaks of the danger represented by the mob and by common slander, Blatant Beast, and emphasizes the necessity of civility and courtly behaviour.

- The poem ends with two Cantos on Mutabilitie[change]

The Faerie Queene is a combination of

- medieval allegory and the more recent romantic Italian epic

- the faerie land itself provides the unity, not of plot but of milieu.

- the great harmony of atmosphere holds together the multiplicity of stories and supports the atmosphere

Main themes:

The Faerie Queene combines:

- sensual temptation, the way Spenser experienced it in himself and observed it in others

- frivolous gallantry

- the frustration of long, serious, and self-condemned passions

- happy love and religious melancholy

All these states become people or places in the Faerie Land.

Two structural ideas:

(i) A structural idea internal to each book

- "an allegorical core" (an inner stage) where the theme of the book would appear disengaged from the complex adventures and reveal its unity:

- an allegorical story of each book (the quests of Redcross's, Guyon)

- a loose collection of allegorical or non-allegorical stories on the fringe [margins]

(ii) A common structural idea

- the quest of Arthur for Gloriana: connects one book to another through the whole poem

- Spenser asks for inspiration from the Queen of the Muses, from Venus and eventually, from the Queen herself, who is assimilated to Gloriana

- Arthur is a lover presumably endlessly seeking an unknown mistress, Gloriana

- Spenser's Arthur is rather different from the traditional British hero

- allegorically, by Arthur is meant Magnificence, [cf. Aristotle’s notion of magnanimity [Arthur is seeking Gloriana, or glory, which is the goal of Aristotle's Magnanimous man]

this glory, in Spenser’s case, is not the earthly glory, but the true Honour, which is associated with the vision of God, of which earthly glory is but a copy

RENAISSANCE LITERATURE IN ENGLAND [3]

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE [1]

2. Shakespeare’s poetic activity:

(a) Poems:

Venus and Adonis (1590)

The Rape of Lucrece (1594)

The Passionate Pilgrim (1599)

The Phoenix and the Turtle(1601)

The Sonnets (1609)

3. Shakespeare’s dramatic activity:

- Although a lot of plays appear in quarto, most of his plays were collected in the volume printed after his death known as The First Folio: Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (1623)

- Typological classification:

Comedies [low romantic; high romantic; golden]

Chronicle (history) plays dealing with British history

Roman plays [Roman history]

Tragedies

Problem plays [skeptical, with an ambiguous ending]

4. Chronological and thematic description:

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 857