What is Shakespearean Sonnet?
What is Shakespearean Sonnet? – Shakespeare wrote in all 154 sonnets. Most of them were written between 1593 and 1596. They were published by Thymas Thorpe in 1609. His sonnet sequences like those of Spenser and Sidney, centre round love either imaginary of real.
What is Shakespearean Sonnet
His sonnets are divided into two groups. The first group containing the first 126 sonnets, is addressed to a young man, the second group, having the rest of the sonnets, contains sonnets addressed to a woman (the so called Dark Lady).
In the first group, the long or ning sequence from I to XVII, is an appeal to a young man to marry a d to preserve his youth and beauty
through his generation. In the following sonnets he claims that his verses are powerful enough to immortalize the youth and beauty of his friend. There are many reflections on the nocturnal torments of the lover on his blindness to the beauty of spring or summer when he is separated from his love. All times, Shakespeare rebukes the youth for his excessive sexual indulgences. At times the melancholy overwhelms the writer, as he looks into the corruption of his age. In two sonnets of the second group, he pays a warm compliment to his mistress on her black complexion and raven black hair and eyes. There he denounces his lady for her proud disdain of his affection and for her manifold relations with other men.
Though subjective in nature it is very surprising to note that Shakespeare’s sonnet do not throw light on the poet’s personality. At a first glance, a far larger proportion of Shakespeare’s sonnets give the reader the illusion of personal confessions than those of any contemporary. But when allowance has been made for the current conventions of Elizabethan sonneteering as well as for Shakespeare’s unapproached influence in dramatic instinct and invention-an affluence which enabled him to identify himself with every phase of human emotion-the authobiographic element, although it may not be dismissed altogether, is seen to shrink to slender proportions.
Shakespeare wrote his sonnets probably between 1594 and 1602, in moments stretched from work for the theatre. His sonnets are the most precious pearls of Elizabethan lyricism some of them unsurpassed by any lyricism. Formidable efforts have been made to deduce the exact history of the poet’s heart from his sonnets and the publisher’s mysterious dedication. Conflicting theories have resulted on his investigation but it must not be allowed to conceal either the absolute beauty of the verses or the clear lines of the drama of feeling they trace. Shakespeare tells of his fervent love for a young man of high birth whose beauty and nobility he celebrates. He devotes himself to him whole-heartedly, finds in him his joy and his consolation for all the misery of life. He also expresses the agony of his love for a capricious and fickle-minded woman who deceives him with his friend, to that friend he is indulgent to point of forgiveness, but for the woman he feels anger gradually increasing to hate.
The finest, most poignant, and most passionate sonnets are those in which he gives himself, with all his love and his genius, to the young man who dazzles him even after he has been betrayed by him. The profound pathos is thrown into relief by the rare beauty of the images and the style, and by the perfection of the versification. Which has a subtle melody never to be surpassed …….. Only the best sonnets of Milton attain to the supreme beauty of the best written by Shakespeare and their themes and effects are entirely different.
– Legouis and Cazamian
George Sampson hold that the sonnet of Shakespeare are a mere literary exercise. They are not autobiographical, for no man would set down in poems for circulation the exact story of his intimate relations with identifiable persons. That Shakespeare (like other men) had disturbing emotional experiences which he projected into his poems and plays may be taken as possible, that the sonnets describe details of these experiences can be dismissed as impossible …… The sonnets of Shakespeare should be read as a collection poems, not as an imperfect and improbable detective story.
The sonnets are of the ‘English’ form (now generally called Shakespearean) i.e., they are built up of three quatrains with a final ‘clench’ in the shape of rhyming couplet, Shakespeare does not use the Italian’ octave and sextant form. Nevertheless many of the sonnets have the real ‘two poėms’ character of the Italian form i.e., there is a break in thought at the end of the octave. Others are more continuously wrought. Regarded as poems, the sonnets are at the height of their kind.
“It is difficult to say whether the sonnets are autobiographical, for not
much is known about Shakespeare’s life. But from the different things they say at different times they do give the impression that they are. One cannot feign for a whole length of only hundred and fifty-four sonnets, and all harping on the same man, the same woman, and the same rival poet.”
– A short History of English Poetry by Brijadish Prasad.
“Though the autobiographical element in the sonnets is unmistakeable, the view that the sonnets present details of disturbing personal experiences can be dismissed as impossible.” We must remember that the author of the sonnets was also a dramatist who knew how to present his personal experiences in an objective form.
Paras Nath Singh
“Like Wordsworth’s ‘Lucy’ there has been much speculation on the identities of these two people (i.e. the young man and the dark lady). The young man might have been the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare’spatron, the dark lady remains suitably elusive.”
The Muses Bower
Important links
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116: (explained in hindi)
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Ralph Waldo Emerson – Poems, Quotes & Books- Biography
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