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BIOGRAPHY
William Shakespeare was born, in Stratford-on-Avon in 1564 and died in 1616. He moved to London and he became the principal actor in the Lord Chamberlains company until 1603. Before 1594 he had established a friendship with the Earl of Southampton a very important figure in his works. His posthumous criticism has been very active. Many of the most important writers in criticizing him are Pope, Samuel Johnson, Coleridge, Walt Whitman and in foreign countries figures such as Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Lessing, Schlegel and many others. The Shakespearean interest during the 18th century and the 19th effervesced into a movement know as Shakespeare Idolatry
NARRATIVE POEMS
A narrative poem is poetry that tells a story about anything. The poem can be short or long, and the story it relates to can be simple or complex. Sometimes the poems lines have a rhyme pattern and sometimes they do not rhyme at all. With this kind of writing Shakespeare was going with the crowd, the themes dealt in Venus and Adonis and Lucrece had the greatest popular appeal and are written in the most conventional stanza-forms.
intimate terms than Venus and Adonis and it must be the graver labour mentioned in the epistle to the earlier work, it is also twice long and more traditional in manner, with a moral and tragic tone. In regard to the sources, it talks about a story told by two Latin authors, Ovid and Livy, as well as several writers in English as Chaucer, Geoffrey Bullough and Painter. But the differences between Shakespeares work and the previous ones are evident, firstly, it is over nine times longer than Chaucers version (the longest of the previous ones) secondly, it does not follow in style and structure earlier versions of this story, for example, Shakespeares Lucreces verbose was not suggested before, in the beginning it makes no reference to some facts, chastity was not mentioned by Ovid... and this last point is used by feminists, among others, to see the development of women in Shakespeare's works. The poem is divided into two parts, the first tells of Tarquins exploit, and the second one provides the lament of Lucrece. For the first episode the model was the large collection of historical tales entitled A Mirror for Magistrates and for the second part it was chosen a variation of these tales, Samuel Daniels Complaint of Rosamond, a complaint poem broadly classified as Ovidian, although Shakespeares tone remains remote from Ovid. On the other hand, it follows the classical advice to open with an action, that is, in medias res and the action is set indoors for the most part of the poem. It is also written in Rhyme Royal whose rhyme scheme is ababbcc and consisting on a 7-line stanza in iambic pentameter (Chaucer was the pioneer of this scheme), with an elegant language and imagery, showing Shakespeares technical skill. The Rape of Lucrece has been seen as a storehouse of Shakespearian themes and images and it is difficult not to see it in retrospect taking into account our knowledge of the plays. The poem has found its place in collected editions or as a way of know Shakespeares imagery, themes, etc. for scholars; but this glory has added little to its own reputation among ordinary readers, it remains the less known and enjoyed of the writers works. But we have to forget about the plays for not to regard this works as an adjunct to them, yet in its own right, it is a striking manifestation of Shakespeares creative power.
Lady is seen as cruel because she is promiscuous the bay where all men ride. She is also physically unattractive, false to her bed-vow, etc and yet irresistibly desirable. The Dark Lady contradicts all the Elizabethans patterns of beauty, so Shakespeare is subverting the conventions. On the other hand, the poet gives her some characteristics that humanise her. Structure The sonnets consist of four quatrains and a final couplet, composed in a iambic pentameter which rhyme-scheme is ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG. It is formed by three quatrains and a final couplet. In the first quatrain it is exposed the theme; in the second, the argument; in the third, the conflict; and in the couplet the conclusion. Not all the sonnets follow this structure: about a third of them are fairly exceptionable in having the logical structure but about a half of them might be said to be tolerably workmanlike in this respect. Shakespeare manipulates, extracts new effects within the rhetorical and metrical framework of the sonnet. Topics The diversity of the topics is the first thing that attracts our attention when we read The Sonnets. These topics, at the same time differentiated and interrelated, form the significant framework of the series. This great variety of topics does not mean the exclusiveness of them. He made use of traditional poetic topics (present in his previous or contemporary authors) but he provided them a unique and original style. The love-inspiration Elizabethan binomial, base for the sonnets writing, is faded in Shakespeare because of his concern of giving an answer to the human- love conflicts. Love is the main topic in The Sonnets and with it come together some subsidiary topics. There are two axes, one of them is: poet-friend-rival poet; and the other one is: poet-dark lady-friend. Both of them corroborate Shakespeare's originality as a sonneteer, since he inverted the Petrarchan formula changing the lady for the friend, manipulating the loving couple with the resulting increase of the characters involved until four, replacing the fair beauty of inaccessible virtue by a dark-haired woman whose physical and moral qualities are uncertain, as his feminine loving object. These parallelisms affect as much to the formal dimension of the sonnet as to content aspects. But, above all, what The Sonnets have really unique is their own essence. Nevertheless, there are also similarities with regard to the Petrarchans, since like them Shakespeare focuses in the Platonic component (love, beauty), or in the love dialectic. As we have said above, not only is the love the outstanding topic in the sonnets, there are other important aspects as time. In his sequence Shakespeare includes mainly the negative sense of it saying that it is cruel, despotic, fallacious, etc. for being the accomplice of the decadence and pessimism, of the painful absence of his friend, of the ephemeral nature of all youth and beauty and finally of death. (e.g.: Pedro) The poet presents his battle against it because the main thing that he wants to preserve is the loving object par excellence in The Sonnets, his friend with his youth and beauty. In this way, he suggests two answers or solutions. The first one is the perpetuation of his friend through the procreation and the second one is the artistic perpetuation, poetic in this particular case, of the loving object. But the latter does not satisfy him because for him it is something cool, and in the last sonnets Shakespeare makes reference to his own love for his friend, a love that no decrease with the pass of time. Also we can see the unfaithfulness represented by the three main characters (poet- friend- dark lady) because it is thought that the friend and the dark lady had an affair and Shakespeare was disillusioned with that fact. Together these central topics there are other secondary thematic elements such as death, weariness of world, frustrations of the poet, etc., evil in form of lust, betrayal or selfishness. There are similarities between these sonnets and the medieval European courtly love tradition, above all in the sonnets to his friend. Shakespeare presents an innovative use of this
tradition since he skilfully manipulates the three distinctive features of this tradition: humility (it is in the own essence of the courtly love, always dishonourable); adultery (the rival poet); and religion of love. The fourth one, courtesity, is omitted given the absence of a lady herself in The Sonnets. Style The internal poetic structure of The Sonnets is especially rhetorical, although they offer a significant organizational variety. Shakespeare assimilated splendidly the rhetorical art, as we can see in his works, to such an extent that often art is confused with nature, achieving his own poetic inspiration. He applied rhetorical and stylistic techniques of composition to his sonnets. They (given its quality of imaginative literature written in verse and in vernacular) have the ability of persuading or moving. Therefore, they allow the rhetorical method of composition, addressed to a popular audience. He had the conscience of a heterogeneous audience composed by aristocracy, intellectuals and also the masses. The caesura can appear in the middle of the verse line after the second or the third foot dividing it into two almost equal hemistiches. The enjambement does not appear much in The Sonnets. The phonological wealth constitutes one of the most outstanding stylistic aspects of The Sonnets, because the linguistic interest in the Elizabethan period was focused on sound aspects: its phonological resources usually go beyond the verse line, linking the different lines of a quatrain or even two quatrains between them. Therefore, the most prevailing rhetorical resources are alliteration, consonance, assonance, vowel harmony, among others. Shakespeare's language is the result of his interaction between the state of the language of his time, which was very different to Modern English because lots of words have changed its meaning and for other reasons, and his particular use of it. Most of the vocabulary is simple, composed by monosyllabic Saxon terms and also polysyllabic Latin ones. The Sonnets' language is mainly poetical due to the abundance of rhetoric resources. Nevertheless, the impression it produces to the reader is one of naturalness, even conversational. They came together two different styles: the rhetorical and eloquent one and the simple and direct one. When he is reproducing the negative dimension of human love or the devastating effects of the pass of time, he usually uses the direct or simple style. At that time, there was an intention to elevate the language and also increase its vocabulary, both were permanent features of the Elizabethan literature; and Shakespeare was particularly praised in the first one. The main methods he used for this task were the use of borrowings, composition from existing terms and the use of the pun. CONTROVERSIES IN THE SONNETS Ana (When written, printed with his approval, whos the Dark-Lady, Rival poet) (Homosexualitu) The dedication The problem of the dedication has been much studied. Who is this Mr. W.H.? It is very accepted that the recipient was the Earl of Southampton, Henry Wriothesly, as in Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, although it is hardly a convincing explanation. Others think that this dedication was not for the inspirer of the poems but for the procurer of the poems, who furnish Thorpe with copy since begetter in Elizabethan English may mean procurer as well as inspirer. Continuity of the Sonnets The Sonnets have had other problems, and one of them is their continuity, some scholars have give a solution to the problem with a reordering of the sonnets to from a narration, but this is not very followed. It is true that some continuities are evident, and we can find paired poems as poems on insomnia (27-8), the four elements (44-5), emotional slavery
(57-8) (see) and there are also several points at which an initial But or Thus locks a sonnet into the argument of its predecessor. Other characteristics knit the poems together as a rhythm, a rhyme, a quirk of syntax or an echoing image; for example the verbal echo of the most famous four sonnets (106-9) (comparison), which in these reordering had been separated, so, it is thought that they dont need to be reordered because when words are not echoic, the images are tied, or the argumentative cast is consistent, etc. A biographical reading, as we understand it now, it is not the best way of reading for these sonnets. Shakespeare stands behind the first person as Sidney in Astrophil and Stellasometimes near the poetic I, sometimes farther off, but never without some degree of rhetorical projection, they are not autobiographical in a psychological mode. But this is not surprising, autobiography hardly existed in the 16 th century England and what there were related only deeds and opinions, not inward thought and emotion, this does not occur until 17 th century with the keeping of diaries. In the sonnet 107, we can distinguish a punctual period of time. (example) The eclipse of the mortal moon is doubtless Elizabeth. The meaning of this has been said to be that Elizabeth survived a serious illness in 1699-1600. It is also said that it links public and private emotion, remarking congruence between the poets love life and the mood of the nation after the accession of James I in 1603. Because of this, the poem has played a crucial role in attempts to date the Sonnets.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1957. 1965. 1986 1938. SHAKESPEARE, W., The Sonnets, and a Lover's Complaint, ed. The New Penguin; Aylesbury, Bucks, 1986. SHAKESPEARE, W., The narrative poems, ed. Penguin Books, Great Britain, 1959. WILLIAMS C., A Short Life of Shakespeare with Sources, ed. Oxford, London 1933. www.cummingsstudyguides.net/xRapeLucr.html www.phoenixandturtle.net ROSEMBLUM, J., Shakespeare, an annotated bibliography, ed. The Magill Bibliographies, California, 1992. SHAKESPEARE, W., The Sonnets, ed. Anagrama, Barcelona, 1974. SHAKESPEARE, W., The Poems, ed. Cambridge, London, 1966. SHAKESPEARE, W., The Rape of Lucrece, ed. The New Penguin Shakespeare; Bungay, Suffock, 1971. SHAKESPEARE, W., The Sonnets, and a Lovers Complaint, ed. Penguin Books; London, ONEGA, S., ed. Estudios Literarios Ingleses. Renacimiento y Barroco , ed. Ctedra, Madrid, HERRSTEIN, B., Discussions of Shakespeares Sonnets, ed. Health and Company, Boston, BULLOUGH, G., Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare , ed. Columbia, London,