Class 3 – 6th July 2020

Shakespeare’s Sonnets

● Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets were first published all together in

a quarto in 1609.
● He wrote six other sonnets for his plays – Romeo and Juliet, Henry
the V, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and in Edward III
● Shakespeare’s Sonnets sprang from the Renaissance tradition
- originated from the Italian Sonnets (14th century)
- introduced in England by Thomas Wyatt in the 16th century
- and Henry Howard gave rhyming meter and division into
quatrain
- Shakespeare broke the 200 years long tradition of sonnet
convention of Petrarch, Dante, and Philip Sidney which
challenged but also opened new terrain of the sonnet form
- he broking away from the tradition content; worshipful love,
almost unattainable goddess like yet unattainable female-object
- by introducing a “fair youth”, a dark lady who is by no means a
goddess
- explores unconventional themes, e.g. lust, homoeroticism,
misogyny, infidelity, and acrimony
- but observes the English sonnet form, the rhyme scheme, 14
lines and the meter with few exceptions
● The quarto of 1609 was published by Thomas Thorpe on 20 May
1609
 - The first 126 addressed to a young man, last 28 to a woman
- The first 17 poems, traditionally known as the “procreation
sonnets”
- addresses the young man—urges him to marry and immortalize
his beauty to the next generation 
- expresses the speaker's love for the young man
- brood upon loneliness, death, and the transience of life
- criticizes the young man for preferring a rival poet
- express ambiguous feelings for the speaker's mistress
- pun on the poet's name
- final two sonnets are allegorical treatments of
Greek epigrams ( satirical statement) referring to the "little love-
god" Cupid
● Shakespeare’s Sonnets are dedicated to Mr. W.H
- Published probably without the poet’s consent by T.T.
- May 1609 was an extraordinary time
- Pandemic, due to plague theatres were closed down
- Shakespeare’s theatre company was on a tour to Oxford and he
was not in Stratford
● Who was Mr. W.H?
- The author’s patron, or the fair youth and both the patron?
- William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke? / Henry Wriothesley, 3rd
Earl of Southampton
- William Hall – a printer
- William Harvey (Southampton’s stepfather)
- William Haughton – contemporary dramatist
- William Hart – Shakespeare’s nephew and male heir
- Willie Hughes
- Oscar Wilde’s short story “The Portrait of Mr. WH”
● Structure and form of Shakespeare’s Sonnets
- 3 quatrains (4-line stanzas) followed by a couplet
- Iambic pentameter (five metrical feet, each consisting of one
short/ unstressed syllable followed by one long/ stressed
syllable, eg Two households, both alike in dignity) also used in
his plays
 - Follows the rhyme scheme- ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
- At the end of the 3rd quatrain, occurs the volta “turn”, the poet’s
mood shifts, and the poet expresses a turn of thoughts
- Few sonnets marked by “octave” and “sestet”/ 15 lines/ iambic
tetra meter /rhyme
- Characters- the poet, the Fair youth, the Dark Lady, the Rival
Poet- not known if they are fiction/ autobiographical
- Triangular love story – the poet loves the Fair Youth, later the
poet has an affair with the Dark Lady, and so does the Fair
Youth
- It is not known which poems were written first
● The Love triangle
- The Fair Youth is unidentified for whom 1-126 sonnets are
devoted
- He is handsome, self-centered, and much sought after
- the poet urging the young man to marry and father children
(sonnets 1–17)
- continues with the friendship developing with the poet’s
admiration, 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
- concludes with the poet’s own act of betrayal, resulting in his
independence from the fair youth (sonnet 152)
- In the Dark Lady sequence (sonnets 127–152) Shakespeare is
the most defiant of the sonnet tradition
- The sequence distinguishes itself from the Fair Youth sequence
with its overt sexuality (Sonnet 151)
- The identity of Dark Lady is also unknown
- 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 Dark Lady presents an adequate receptor for male desire
- She is celebrated in cocky terms that would be offensive to her
- the speaker rebukes her for enslaving his fair friend (sonnet 130)
- He can't abide the triangular relationship, and it ends with him
both rejecting her and the Fair Youth
- The Rival Poet’s identity is also concealed – a combination of
all of them!
- Because he was threatened by competing poets for fame and
patronage
● “A Lover’s Complaint”
- Part two of the quarto published in 1609
- expresses the misery of a woman victimized by male desire
- The young man of the sonnets and the young man of “A Lover’s
Complaint” provide a thematic link between the two parts
- In each part the young man is handsome, wealthy and
promiscuous, unreliable and admired by all
● Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Conventional Elizabethan Poetry
- scornful of allusions
- inspired by biographical elements of his life (critiques to have
over explored speculated without evidence)
- so it turned us towards his rich text, highly complex structure of
language and ideas
- context of the culture and literature of the sonnets
- non expert readers can also take pleasure from reading
Shakespeare’s sonnets