SHAKESPEARE & HIS SONNETS

English evolved over the course of three main periods:

1. Anglo Saxon (“Old English”) (420-1066)
2. Middle English (1066-1400s)
3. Modern English (1500s to the modern day)

(1) ANGLO SAXON (420-1066)

THE PEOPLE:

• Christian Viking tribes from Norway settled in Great Britain starting in 420.

THE LANGUAGE:

• In this period, English is a Germanic language.
• The culture is filled with irony, pessimism, dark humor, and hero worship of the warrior.
• The Anglo Saxons loved understatement.

THE POETRY:

• Poetry in this era was alliterative, with four-accent lines.
• Main texts/authors = Beowulf, poems by Christian monks

(1) ANGLO SAXON (420-1066)

Cædmon’s “Hymn” *

Nu sculon herigean heofroncies Weard

Meotodes meahte and his modgepanc

weorc Wuldor-Fæder swa he wundra gehwæs

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Translation:

Now we must praise heaven-kingdom’s Guardian,

the Measurer’s might and his mind-plans,

the work of the Glory-Father, when he of wonders of every one

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* Æ or æ is a grapheme named æsc or ash, formed from the letters a and e. In old English, it was denoted by the rune ᚫ and was called “æsc” (“ash tree”).

• The Battle of Hastings, fought on October 14, 1066, marks the division between Anglo Saxon and Middle English.
• The troops of the French Duke William of Normandy sailed to England so the Duke could seize what he viewed as his rightful throne.
• The French Normans conquered the Anglo Saxons, led by King Harold, that day on a battlefield seven miles from the English town of Hastings.

(2) MIDDLE ENGLISH (1066-1400s)

THE PEOPLE:

• The Battle of Hastings enabled the settlement of French Normans, who brought French, Latin, and Greek influences.
• Traditions of chivalry (think the Arthurian legends) develop.
• The Church is a massive influence culturally.

THE LANGUAGE:

• English gains 10,000 new words as a result of Norman influence (the Norman nobles spoke French and Latin, as well as other Romance languages).

THE POETRY:

• French nobles spread 14th century Italian and French poetry (mainly Dante & Petrarch) to England and are obsessed with the classics (The Odyssey, The Iliad, Greek mythology, etc.)
• Main texts/authors = Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales
• Chaucer invented iambic pentameter and heroic couplets

(1) MIDDLE ENGLISH (1066-1420)

The Canterbury Tales - from The Wife of Bath’s Tale

I shal saye sooth: tho housbondes that I hadde

As three of hem were good, and two were badde.

The three meen were goode, and riche, and olde;

Unnethe mighte they the statut holde

In whih they were bounden unto me--

Yet woot wel what I mene of this, pardee.

As help me God, I laughe when I thinke

How pitously anight I made hem swinke

And by myfay, I tolde of it no stoor

• The Renaissance (1509-1660), a time of cultural rejuvenation and awakening after the Dark Ages in Europe, marks the origin of Modern English.
• During the Renaissance, scholars revived classical texts, made mathematical discoveries, and sought to expand knowledge of the world through science and discovery.
• Renaissance comes from the French word for “rebirth” (re = again & naître = born).

(3) MODERN ENGLISH (1500s to today)

THE PEOPLE:

• Courtly love, extravagance, and cleverness were popular artistically under the reign of Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603), who commissioned works of art and literature under the patronage system.

THE LANGUAGE:

• The English language becomes more modern and developed as writers begin to write more in English than in other languages. Continued growth of new English words as writers invent new words.

THE POETRY:

• Sir Thomas Wyatt introduces Petrarchan sonnet to English poetry.
• Sonnets galore & Shakespeare creates the Shakespearean sonnet.
• Major texts/authors: Shakespeare, Wyatt, Skelton, Sidney, Spenser (The Fairie Queen), Milton (Paradise Lost).

PETRARCHAN POETRY

Petrarchan poetry is characterized by male poets describing their female love interests in hyperbolic terms.

• For instance, the lover is a ship on a stormy sea, and his mistress is either "a cloud of dark disdain" or the sun.

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Petrarchan poetry involved the idea of a woman's eyes as rendering a man powerless and the idea of falling in love through the eyes.

BLAZON

Part of the hyperbolic way Petrarchan poets described women involved blazon. Blazon was the practice of cataloging a woman's physical attributes and hyperbolically comparing them to beautiful or rare objects, such as jewels, celestial bodies, natural phenomenon, etc.

• Ex: Spenser’s “Epithalamion” includes examples of blazon: “Her goodly eyes like sapphires shining bright, / Her forehead ivory white …”

PETRARCHAN SONNET

• Starts with an octave (an eight-line stanza) which presents a problem. Rhyme scheme is ABBAABBA.
• Followed by a sestet (a six-line stanza) which addresses the problem. Rhyme scheme is CDECDC or CDCDCD.
• A volta (a shift/turn) occurs in the 9th line.

SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET

• Also known as an Elizabethan sonnet.
• This type of sonnet has a rhyme scheme of ABABCDCDEFEFGG.
• It ends with a closed heroic couplet. A closed heroic couplet is a term for two rhyming lines.
• Lines in heroic couplets are end-stopped (each line is a full thought with end punctuation, which emphasizes the rhyme).
• The volta occurs in the 13th line.

IAMBIC PENTAMETER

• In poetry, “meter” describes the way a poetic line flows. Meter takes into consideration the number of syllables in the line as well as the way each syllable is stressed.
• In meter, syllables are described as “stressed,” denoted by “ / ” or “unstressed,” denoted by “ u “
• Meter can be “rising” (starting with an unstressed syllable, then moving to stressed syllables) or “falling” (starting with a stressed syllable, then moving to unstressed syllables).

IAMBIC PENTAMETER

There are four main meters:

• The iamb saunters through my book / trochees rush and tumble / if the anapests run like a scurrying brook / dactyls are stately and classical.
• iamb: u / two-syllable rising meter
• trochee: / u two-syllable falling meter
• anapest: u u / three-syllable rising meter
• dactyl: / u u three-syllable falling meter

IAMBIC PENTAMETER

When scholars describe a poem’s rhythm, they describe in terms of the stress pattern (iambic, trochaic, anapestic, or dactylic) and in terms of the number of stress patterns (“feet”) in a line (monometer (1), dimeter (2), trimeter (3), tetrameter (4), pentameter (5), hexameter (6), heptameter (7), and octameter (8)).

• iambic pentameter = five iambic “feet”
• I u / I u / I u / I u / I u / I
• “When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, / I all alone beweep my outcast state”