William Shakespeare as a Sonneteer | Shakespeare as a Poet, Characteristics of Shakespeare's Sonnets

 

INTRODUCTION:

Elizabethan age has been rightly called as “a nest of singing birds”. Shakespeare, Spenser and Sidney are the trio-poets of this most flowering period of English literature who heralded a new trend of writing fabulous songs and sonnets in sequence.

William Shakespeare has been applauded as the most outstanding poet and dramatist of English literature. As a poet he wrote a series of 154 sonnets from 1593 to 1596 and published them in 1609. Out of 154 sonnets, first 126 sonnets are addressed to William Lord Herbert (often called Mr. W. H.) and the remaining 28 sonnets are narrating the charm and beauty of a Dark Lady whom Shakespeare is believed to have loved in his personal life.

THE ‘FAIR YOUTH’ SONNETS:

Sonnets 1 to 126 are addressed to a young man, socially superior to the speaker. The first 17 sonnets encourage this youth to marry and have childrenHere, the poet urges him to reproduce so that his physical beauty will be eternalized through future generations.

All these sonnets are written in sequence and addressed to Mr. W. H. who is believed to be his rival, friend or patron.

THE ‘DARK LADY’ SONNETS:

Sonnets 127 to 152 seem to be addressed to a woman, the so-called ‘Dark Lady’ of Shakespearean legend. This woman is mysterious, often tyrannous, and causes the speaker great pain and shame. Many of these sonnets reflect on the paradox of the ‘fair’ lady’s ‘dark’ complexion.

FORM OF SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET:

Shakespeare took inspiration from Petrarchan sonnets of Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard and he reinvented the form to suit his own style, language and themes. Shakespeare’s sonnets are composed of 14 iambic pentameter lines, and are divided into three quatrains (stanzas of four lines) and a final, concluding couplet (stanza of two lines). The rhyming pattern of his sonnets is “abab cdcd efef gg”. In first three quatrains, the poet presents an argument or a problem and the last couplet brings about the final solution of the problem or argument. This sonnet form and rhyme scheme became very popular among other poets and it was later known as the English Sonnet or Shakespearean Sonnet.

USE OF METAPHORS AND IMAGES:

As far as use of metaphors and images is concerned, Shakespeare has followed the tradition of Italian sonnets. Petrarch's famous sonnet sequence was written as a series of love poems to an idealized and idolized mistress named Laura. Here. Petrarch praises her beauty, her worth, and her perfection using an extraordinary variety of metaphors based largely on natural beauties.

Shakespeare too follows this tradition and has presented  highly idealizing comparisons between nature and the poets' lover that were, if taken literally, completely ridiculous. Look at some of his idealized comparisons.

My mistress' eyes are like the sun;

Her lips are red as coral;

Her cheeks are like roses,

Her breasts are white as snow,

Her voice is like music,

She is a goddess.

 

THEMES OF SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS:

Various themes exist in Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence. But mainly we see three themes of love, time and beauty.

·      Love: First of all, love is seen as a common theme, as it was in many of the Elizabethan sonnets.

·      Time: His sonnets also focus on the power of time, and how time can wither away beauty. In many of his poems that are written to the young man, Shakespeare is demonstrating the theme of the importance of reproduction. Regarding the theme of time, Shakespeare asserts that only love and poetry (are the only phenomena that can counter time.

·      Beauty: Spenser values the moral and intellectual aspects of beauty in his ‘Amoretti Songs’. But Shakespeare champions physical beauty that is portrayed through a person’s looks. It is important to note here that, while the subject of Spenser’s sonnets was his desired female lover, Shakespeare was addressing his poems to a young man.

CONCLUSION:

From every point of view and in every respect Shakespeare remained a genius in this field. The variety of themes, the lyrical appeal, the striking images and pictures, the wealth of conceits, the simplicity of language, the melody and music- all these combines to make his sonnets one of the richest poetic treasures and thereby ensuring an unrivalled place for Shakespeare in the history of English literature.

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