Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Love At First Sight vs. Im/Mortality Love vs. Art

Outline

Sonnet 18 “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s

Day” 116 “Let me not to the marriage of

true mind” from Romeo and Juliet from Shakespeare in Love your turn …

Sonnet ---

• A logical argument • “A sonnet is fundamentally a dialectical construct ( 辨證過程 ) which allows the poet to examine the nature and ramifications of two usually contrastive ideas, emotions, states of mind, beliefs, actions, events, images, etc., by juxtaposing the two against each other, and possibly resolving or just revealing the tensions created and operative between the two. (source)

Sonnets: Subject Matter

154 altogether 1-17 – urge a young man to get married

and have babies 18 -126 – human mortality and

immortality of poetry 127 154 The dark lady sequence

(e.g. 116 -- Let me not to the marriage of true mind Admit impediments

-- 130 “My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun” _

Sonnet: Its Metrical Form

Meter: iambic pentameter 3 major types: Petrarchan,

English/Shakespearean and Spenserian Petrarchan: an octave + a sestet Spenserian and English: 3 quatrain + a

couplet

a b a bc d c de f e fg g

a b a b b c b c c d c d e e

a b b a a b b ac d c d c d (& variations) ; e.g. Ozymandias

Sonnet: Its Logical Form

Petrarchan = an octave + a sestet A. Octave: Subject, proposition, problem B. Sestet: Turn, resolution

English/Shakespearean 3 quatrains’ elaboration of a theme a couplet (punch line 妙語 )

Two parts with a [turn] in the middle, and/or punch line at the end.

18 “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day”

Two Kinds of Summer

Summer –corn, artichoke, eggplantGiuseppe Arcimboldo (about 1527-1593) source

Starting Questions

How is summer described in this poem? How is it different from the “thou” in the

poem? What are the functions of repetition in this

poem? What is the real object of this poem?

18. “Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?” by Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more 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;

(trim: To make neat, or to adjust or balance a ship) * Summer – temporary (with a lease), sun = the eye of heaven, with a face * Changes and decay = regular sometimes, chancy and irregular sometimes

Images of decay; Repetition & contrast?

Spondee

/ / //

“Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?” by Shakespeare

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.

1. ow’st – own, possess 2. This – the poem

“Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?” by Shakespeare

1st reading: 汝比夏日更美﹐更溫和﹐更長久﹐ 只要汝長存與我詩中。

Poetic device: Hyperbole: thou grow’st in these eternal lines repetition: Every fair from fair;

See contradictions in the next slide

1) Thou art more lovely and more temperate2) Thy eternal summer

Apparent Contradictions Summer vs. Eternal Summer

1) Summer’s images of beauty (Rough winds vs.) the

darling buds of May every fair from fair

sometime declines

2) Images of transience or violence: Rough winds shakes summer's lease . .. too

short a date too hot the eye of heaven [Sun’s] gold complexion

dimm'd

Actual Similarities and Ambiguities in Stanza 2

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.

As always, the closing couplet is the punch line which not only defines the meaning of the whole poem, but also provides richer meanings.

1. Two “Nor’s” – made possible by the poem; 2. That fair thou ow’st vs. every fair from fair; “ow’st” = grow’st You owe your immortality to this poem

Howard Moss (1922-1987) "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day"

Who says you're like one of the dog days?

You're nicer. And better. Even in May, the weather

can be gray, And a summer sub-let

doesn't last forever.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date

Dog days = ( 三伏天 )Sub-let – 分租 allow some one to rend a room which you are renting from someone else who is the first tenant?

Howard Moss (1922-1987) "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day"

Sometimes the sun's too hot;

Sometimes it is not. Who can stay young forever?

People break their necks or just drop dead!

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

Howard Moss's "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day"

But you? Never!

If there‘s just one condensed reader left

Who can figure out the abridged alphabet,

After you're dead and gone,

In this poem you'll live on!

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.

Is immortality ever guaranteed? Even literature can be forgotten or ignored.

Condensed: reduced in length, thickened; reader: ( 讀者﹐讀本 ) abridged alphabet （節錄字母﹚– cell phone literature?

Let me not to the marriage of true mindsLet me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

Oh no! It is an ever fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken.

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come.

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Notes: “Fixed Mark” Father Time

Mark = sea mark, lighthouseSaturn (or Chronos): the Roman Deity of

Time and an ancient Italian Corn God known as the Sower (image and info source)

Starting Questions

1. What is the main idea? Why can’t the marriage of true-minded people be stopped?

2. “Love is not love/Which alters when it alteration finds” – What do the two “love’s” mean? And “alter” and “alternation”?

3. What kind of love “bends with the remover to remove”?

4. What patterns can you find in terms of its use of words and rhymes, its alteration between the positive and the negative?

5. What do you think about the punch line? Are there ambiguities?

Two Kinds of LoveTrue Love Changeful Love Circumstances

UnchangedUnmoved

Alters, bends to move

Alteration Remover

Compared to “fixed mark” (lighthouse) and

north star

StormLost ship

Not Time’s Fool rosy lips and cheeks shows aging signsTime with his sickle;

Does not alters his brief hours and weeks; Edge of doom

True love = people’s love = my writing

Structural Pattern

1. 1st quatrain: what love does not do

2. 2nd quatrain: what love is

3. 3rd quatrain: alteration between what love is not and does not

4. Couplet: the final stake of both writing and love

5. Q: can the changing circumstances be denied?

A Critics says—Do you Agree?

[In Sonnet 116] the chief pause in sense is after the twelfth line. Seventy-five per cent of the words are monosyllables; only three contain more syllables than two; none belong in any degree to the vocabulary of 'poetic' diction. There is nothing recondite, exotic, or metaphysical in the thought. There are three run-on lines, one pair of double-endings. There is nothing to remark about the rhyming except the happy blending of open and closed vowels, and of liquids, nasals, and stops; nothing to say about the harmony except to point out how the fluttering accents in the quatrains give place in the couplet to the emphatic march of the almost unrelieved iambic feet. In short, the poet has employed one hundred and ten of the simplest words in the language and the two simplest rhyme-schemes to produce a poem which has about it no strangeness whatever except the strangeness of perfection. (Brooke, 234)

Romeo & Juliet

the Courting Sonnet Act I, Scene V

Love at First Sight (I, v, 41-53)

ROMEO [To a Servingman]

What lady is that, which doth enrich the handOf yonder knight?

Servant I know not, sir.

ROMEO

O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!It seems she hangs upon the cheek of nightLike a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear;Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand,And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.

TYBALT This, by his voice, should be a Montague.

Seen across a crowded room:

Context – Benvolio (I, i, 226) have brought Romeo to the Masque so that he will see other women, and thus have his mind taken off his obsession Rosalinde – likewise, Capulet has brought Paris there under the same advice (I, ii, 31)

The irony is, therefore, that once they set eyes on each other, they see no-one else – establishing their own personal PRIVATE SPACE within the PUBLIC realm of the masque.

source

ROMEO [To JULIET] If I profane with my unworthiest hand aThis holy shrine, the gentle sin is this: bMy lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand aTo smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. b

JULIET Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, cWhich mannerly devotion shows in this; dFor saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, cAnd palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss. d

ROMEO Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too? e

JULIET Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer. f

ROMEO O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do; eThey pray: grant thou, lest faith turn to despair. f

JULIET Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake. g

ROMEO Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take. g (kiss)Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.

Act I, v, 92 – 106Metaphors?

JULIET Then have my lips the sin that they have took.ROMEO Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!Give me my sin again.JULIET You kiss by the book.

Act I, v, 92 – 106

Images: religious

1. Romeo -- hands’ and lips’ pilgrimage: Profane: (verb) to treat something sacred, holy,

or special with abuse.  Shrine= Juliet or her hand:  (noun)  a place

where pilgrims visit to pray to and worship a saint. Usually with a statue or relic of a saint.

Pilgrim or Palmer (a person wearing two crossed palm leaves as a sign of pilgrimage to the Holy Land.)

Puns: palm– hand, palm leaves  

Conceit: Extended and Developed Metaphor of pilgrimage and purgation

Juliet’s argument 1. Juliet= a HOLY SHRINE.2. Juliet -- “Good pilgrim” =

Romeo; saint = Juliet; holy palmers’ kiss = palm

to palm 3. Juliet = lips for prayer 4. Saints do not “move” –

initiate things, move. 5. Sin taken6. Kiss by the book (sonnet,

rules, Bible)

Romeo’s argument 1. Romeo’s lips = TWO

BLUSHING PILGRIMS  Romeo’s kiss on her hand =

GENTLE SIN3. Romeo = use lips 4. “O, then, dear saint, let lips

do what hands do;” =

5. kiss sin purged (2nd kiss) sin taken back.

(What’s the sin? Touching her hand)

Courtly Love and Courting Sonnets Courtly Love – originated in the court,

the illicit love between a knight and the queen as his lady (e.g. King Arthur’s legends, Tristan and Iseult) , the love which inspires the knight to go on a noble quest.

the Petrarchan tradition of courtly love poetry (Laura) e.g. common paradoxes about courtly love such as "sweet torment" and "shivering at midsummer."

Shakespeare: courting sonnets and sonnets on love, poetry & mortality

The Metaphysical Poetry –witty seduction and platonic love.

Image source

Shakespeare in Love

Shakespeare inspired to write Romeo and Juliet and The Twelfth Night by his lover, Viola de Lesseps.

Two parallel plotlines of the film and the play within the film.

The Love of Poetry, Play and/or between the two of them

The poetic lines can be so touchingly read…

Shakespeare in Love: Clips –the Love of Poetry or of a Woman

1- Shakespeare in his writer’s block 2- audition 3. Lady in (dance) –balcony scene – Shakespeare writing again   4. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? 5. talk on the boat “My Mistress’s Eyes Are Nothing like a

Sun” 6. (after the first love-making) –performance balcony scene (Act

2 scene 1) 7. [after the revelation of S’s marriage and the death of Marlow] –

Romeo’s parting (Act 3, Scene 5) 8. The play -- “Two households …”

YOUR TURN!!!

Sonnet–

a. A witty argument 1. Difficult part explained

2. Complex meanings and sound arrangement analyzed (“turn” and punchline)

b. A love poem1. Read the poem as a love poem

2. Relevance? (Youthful, romantic love, mortality and keeping something immortal in one’s work

3. Any other ideas? (putting the pieces back)