SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS

Prepare a written report based on the following mind map.

Shakespeare devoted himself to writing sonnets between 1592 and 1598 because the theater was forced to close due to the plague.In fact, he moved to London where he embarked on a career as a playwright. The sonnets initially circulated in manuscript form and were published all together in a quarto only in 1609.

Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets that are composed in iambic pentameter. The Shakespearean sonnets displays the typical Elizabethan conventions of the sonnet. They consist of 14 lines that are arranged into three quatrains in alternate rhyme and a rhyming couplet. The rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The third quatrain, called ‘turn’, generally introduces an unexpected change of image or tone. The final couplet, instead, usually presents a surprising conclusion. The sonnets are divided into two different sections. Sonnets from 1 to 126 are addressed to a young man called ‘The Fair Youth’ and the second section, that are sonnets from 127 to 154, are addressed to a woman that is ‘The Dark Lady’.

The sonnets cover such themes as the passage of time, love, infidelity, jealousy, beauty and mortality. The feeling of love is explored in all its manifestations. The first 17 poems, that are the ‘procreation sonnets’, urge the Fair Youth to marry and have children in order to transmit his beauty and make it immortal. The second group of sonnets revolves around the relationship with the dark lady. Her physical features distinguish her from the angelic woman of Petrarchan sonnets. The dark lady section, unlike the fair youth section is overtly sexual in its passion. Several sonnets speculate about the unpleasant sensations caused by love.

Another recurring theme is the role of time against love. Time, indeed, destroys love because it implies growing old, decaying and dying. The power of Shakespeare’s poems consists in making the fair youth and the dark lady immortal and forever young and beautiful.

Shakespeare debates innovative aspects for his time. The dark lady, for example, is not like the typical woman of the traditional love sonnets, she is not an idealised woman. She is not like an angel like the Petrarchan woman, but she is shown like a real woman. Shakespeare also writes to a man and he underlines the lover’s beauty. He doesn’t speak only about platonic love but also sexual desire. Shakespeare creates a more complex portrayal of human love.

Shakespeare uses a lot of symbols to build meanings. Nature, so flowers, plants and trees, not only illustrates beauty but also the role of time on things. Stars influence human beings’ destiny because of the great chain of being.