William Shakespeare (bapt. 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616)
® Shakespeare's Sonnets 154 in number
® 14 Lines in number with Three Quatrains and a Couplet
® Iambic Pentameter
® Rhyming: Alternate--------------ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
® Shakespeare did not write his sonnets for publication.
® Thomas Thorpe published them in 1609 without his permission.
® His sonnets fall in Three groups
® 1-126 Addressed to a fair youth with whom the poet seems to have had a romantic relationship.
F 1-17 Procreation Sonnet:
F 18-126 Sonnets focus on the power of poetry and pure love to defeat death and enemies
F Sonnets from 78--86 contains 9 sonnets addressed to a Rival Poet (probably George Chapman)
® Sonnets from 127-152 contain 28 sonnets addressed to a dark lady. She is promiscuous and cunning, with whom the poet and the fair youth are in love.
® Last two 153 and 154 are addressed to cupid the god of Love, thus making all 154 in the sequence.
® These sonnets are amatory in character but it was in these sonnets that Shakespeare bared his soul and must have found their publication quite embarrassing
® In some of his sonnets he reflects on death, lust, physical union and the soul of the man
® WHO DID SHAKESPEARE ADDRESS WITH HIS SONNETS?
® They may be addressed to a series of different people.
® The first 17 sonnets for example seem to be addressed to a fair youth, an aristocratic young man, imploring him to get married and have children. There are several candidates for this Fair Youth.
® The identity of Mr W.H., "the only begetter of Shakespeare's Sonnets", is not known for certain. His identity has been the subject of a great amount of speculation:
F William Herbert,, Earl of Pembroke: refused to marry Elizabeth Carey, granddaughter of the Lord Chamberlain, the patron of the company Shakespeare worked for. His initials fit the dedication of the book to 'Mr WH'. He was also a patron of Shakespeare and later became one of the dedicatees of the First Folio.
F Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton to whom in 1593 Shakespeare dedicated his poem Venus and Adonis and later The Rape of Lucrece. He has the correct initials, just reversed - perhaps to conceal his identity. He was a literary patron of Shakespeare.
® Thomas Thorpe: A Publisher or Printer: Some scholars believe "Mr. W.H." could refer to Thomas Thorpe, the publisher who brought the sonnets to print without Shakespeare's authorization. This theory suggests the dedication was a clever marketing ploy.
Towards the end of the series there are 28 sonnets addressed to a woman. Far from idealising a perfect woman, they feature a female lover accused of making the poet sexually obsessed, furiously jealous, of cheating on him, stealing away his boyfriend, and giving him a dose of the clap. No one knows the identity of the 'Dark Lady' but possible candidates include:
F Mary Fitton - maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth, and the mistress of William Herbert.
F Emilia Lanier - mistress of Lord Hunsdon, (Henry Carey) the Lord Chamberlain, and thus Shakespeare’s boss, as patron of his company. Emilia was also a member of the Venetian Bassano family, who were musicians at court.
F Black Luce, a brothel owner in Clerkenwell
F The wife of John Florio, a linguist and translator of Montaigne, who may have been satirised as the pedantic Holofernes In Love’s Labour’s Lost.
® Possibly the Dark Lady is an amalgam of many different women.
Form and structure of the sonnets
v The sonnets are almost all constructed of three quatrains (four-line stanzas) followed by a final couplet. The sonnets are composed in iambic pentameter, the metre used in Shakespeare's plays.
v The rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Sonnets using this scheme are known as Shakespearean sonnets, or English sonnets, or Elizabethan sonnets. 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.
v There are a few exceptions: Sonnets 99, 126, and 145. Number 99 has fifteen lines. Number 126 consists of six couplets, and two blank lines marked with italic brackets; 145 is in iambic tetrameters, not pentameters. In one other variation on the standard structure, found for example in sonnet 29, the rhyme scheme is changed by repeating the second (B) rhyme of quatrain one as the second (F) rhyme of quatrain three.
