Shakespeare Sonnets

• A sonnet is a 14-line form of lyric poetry with a strict rhyme scheme. It first appeared in Italy during the Renaissance, when Petrarchan sonnets first appeared (13th century).

• A Shakespearean sonnet is written in iambic pentameter. The a rhyme scheme is usually abab cdcd efef gg. The last two lines form a rhyming couplet.

Sample rhyme schemeSonnet 140

Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press aMy tongue-tied patience with too much disdain;bLest sorrow lend me words and words express aThe manner of my pity-wanting pain. bIf I might teach thee wit, better it were, cThough not to love, yet, love, to tell me so; dAs testy sick men, when their deaths be near, cNo news but health from their physicians know;dFor if I should despair, I should grow mad, eAnd in my madness might speak ill of thee: fNow this ill-wresting world is grown so bad, eMad slanderers by mad ears believed be, fThat I may not be so, nor thou belied, gBear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide. g

• In his own time, Shakespeare was better known to readers as a poet than as a playwright. His long poem Venus and Adonis sold much more than even his most popular plays at the time.

• The Sonnets were originally written for a select private audience, as was the tradition at the time. In 1609, they were published by an entrepreneur who might have never even asked for permission from Shakespeare.

• Through this 1609 edition, we have 154 Shakespeare sonnets, which make up a dramatic sequence and hint to a troubled love story involving a ménage-à-trois.

• While sonnets 1-126 are addressed to a “lovely youth”, a male person beloved to the persona, sonnets 127-154 are addressed to a Dark Lady whom the persona both loves and despises, especially for seducing the male beloved of the first sequence.

• Although we do not know if the sonnets are autobiographical or if the speaker is just another character Shakespeare created, tradition has seen the sonnets as autobiographical.

• The dedication at the beginning of the 1609 Quarto, which tantalizingly points to a “Mr. W. H.” as the “begetter”, that is, the inspirer of the sonnets, has led to centuries of fruitless conjectures about the identity of Mr. W. H. and his relationship to Shakespeare.

Publisher Thomas Thorpe’s dedication

• Possible identifications for Mr. W. H., who might have been Shakespeare’s literary patron.

• The Dark Lady is thought altogether impossible to identify, although Sonnet 145 puns on the name of Shakespeare wife, Anne Hathaway.

Sonnet 18

• Mortality is one of the major concerns of Shakespearean literature and Sonnet 18, like some other sonnets in the lovely youth sequence, expresses a desire for the immortality of the beloved man.This, however, is not the religious concept of immortality achieved in a “life after death”.So what kind of immortality is Shakespeare speaking about?

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?Thou art more lovely and 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 ow'st;Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Sonnet 130My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;Coral is far more red than her lips' red;If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.I have seen roses damask, red and white,But no such roses see I in her cheeks;And in some perfumes is there more delightThan in the breath that from my mistress reeks.I love to hear her speak, yet well I knowThat music hath a far more pleasing sound;I grant I never saw a goddess go;My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare.