Shakespeare Sonnets - Essay Example

?First information ANALYSIS OF SHAKESPEARE SONNETS: READING FOR A DIFFERENCE This is an essay that is interested in the analysis of Shakespeare Sonnets: Reading for a difference with regard to an article by Helen Veldar. Shakespeare sonnets are a form of writing poems that originated from Italy and its invention is credited to Giacomo da Lentini. The word sonnet actually comes from an Italian word sonneti whose meaning is ‘little song’. A well-known sonnet writer was William Shakespeare and hence the sonnets are usually identified mainly through Shakespeare’s work. A sonnet writer is called a sonneteer. A Shakespearean sonnet is known to consist of fourteen lines that are composed using the iambic pentameter. This is a form of structure where five stressed syllables follow an unstressed syllable. The Shakespeare sonnets are known to follow the following rhyme scheme: a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g. There have been structural changes in sonnets from the time of invention to the time of Shakespeare. In the Italian sonnets, they had a sonnet structured as 8-6 or 8-4-2 to make the fourteen lines that constitute am sonnet. Shakespeare’s sonnets had a different format of 4-4-4-2. Helen Veldar in her article, Shakespeare sonnets: reading for a difference, uses examples of sonnets in order to express her views on how sonnets convey messages. The Shakespeare sonnets were never before 1609 imprinted in any way. These were poems that were composed and written by Shakespeare. The Shakespeare sonnets are seen to revolve around the themes of love, time passage, immortality, and beauty. These are the main themes that Shakespeare handled in his sonnets. The first seventeen poems are being addressed to a youthful man who is being asked or advised to look for a bride and marry her. He is then being asked to get children so that they can help pass out his beauty and make it immortal. This will be done by passing it over to other generations that will come. All the sonnets have been differently analyzed and some have faced criticisms on how they are supposed to mean and understanding of each sonnet. The last two sonnets are making reference to cupid a Greek small love-god. In the Shakespeare sonnets, there are three characters who are well identified in the poems. There is the young man who is referred to as the fair youth. Other characters in his poems are the rival poet and the dark lady. The fair youth is admired for the beauty but later comes to fall for the dark lady (Wells 439). The sonnets follow the Petrarchan tradition in love poems that makes Shakespeare to invert, consciously, the roles involving gender hence bringing out the complexity depicted in human love (Stapleton 272). Shakespeare has been observed to breach several guidelines that are used in sonnets that others follow. He has played with gender roles in sonnet 20, he has highlighted evils that are not related with love in sonnet 124, he ridicules love in sonnet 128, and he freely talks about sex in sonnet 129. Evolution is said to be the occurrence of changes in the inherited or hereditary traits as generations progresses and this helps bring about diversity in the genre that is under evolution. From Veldar’s point of view, she analyses the Shakespeare sonnets in a different way than other analysts have done. She analyses them as ‘a dynamic curve of inner emotional evolution’. She tends to mean that Shakespeare sonnets portray a continuously changing way of expressing the emotional changes we experience in our hearts. Other analyst view Shakespeare sonnets as poems that rotate around static point that seems to depict the sonnets as to portray a similar emotional aspect. For example, a story of love being retold in a new sonnet. Evolution is pertinent in sonnets in order for a difference in the plot to be understood. A change in how a message is conveyed in a sonnet is necessary so as to desist from a static analysis of sonnets and have a dynamic view. The four parts in a Shakespeare sonnet are very important in realizing the inner emotional evolution as depicted by the writer. Shakespeare’s structure of a sonnet was 4-4-4-2 as earlier shown and these are the four parts I am talking about. Every part in the sonnet has an intended understanding from a representation of the internal emotional evolution. These parts may not be four in all sonnets such as those during the Italian invention. A sonnet has a strict rhyme scheme and a strict structure that must be followed for a poem to be classified as a sonnet. Sonnets are mainly used to reveal inner emotions due to their ability to maintain rhyme. If you are to read a sonnet plainly, you are left with questions in your mind such as, what does the sonneteer want to mean? Why use some words in a description of love? Other times you get a totally different understanding of a sonnet from what you should be getting. When it comes to understanding the dynamic nature of a sonnet, there is need to come up with a perfect way of reading a sonnet that will help you as the reader come to an understanding of the sonnet otherwise you will be getting some static understanding of the sonnets that you read. With the methods of reading that are taught in school, it is hard to read a sonnet and come up with a true understanding of what is meant. These methods will always give a similarity of in what each sonnet is talking about. If we are to read and try to understand a sonnet one sentence at a time, we are losing the whole point of this being a sonnet. A sonnet is a poem that contains rhyme in its lines. Rhyme scheme has an intended effect on a reader and hence reading a sonnet one line at a time we might not get to feel the rhyme. Reading a sonnet and trying to sing it will bring out the rhyme represented by the rhyme scheme. This will help you as the reader to come up with an understanding of the plot by identifying the key words of the poem. Key words are properly brought about by the rhyming words. Hence reading a sonnet and being able to derive the rhythm and the rhyming ones will help you get a better understanding of the sonnet compared to plain reading line by line. While reading sonnets, you have to identify the style of repetition used in the four parts of a Shakespeare sonnet. Why is it that the same one is repeated in lines? Shakespeare is known to have used a keyword in the lines of different parts of the sonnet repetitively. An example is in sonnet four in line 5 ‘Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse’ and in line 6 ‘The bounteous largess given thee to give?’ (Shakespeare 4)The repeated sub-word is -teous. By reading this from a written document/script, it becomes difficult to rightly identify what the sonnets repeated words are by just reading. Hence it is important to read the sonnets and also perform an oral read of the sonnets to help you as the reader derive these words by identifying the rhyme in between the lines based on words. This is identified in several of Shakespeare’s sonnets and thus it will be good to perform an oral read for the sonnets so as to depict these styles as contained in the sonnets. Another example of this is evident in Sonnet 7. The word tha is used in every part of the structure of the sonnet is ‘look’. It has been used as look, unlook and looks. One has to be keen in analyzing to get this from the poem. It would be hard to analyse one sentence at a time and be able to come up with this observation. This requires that you analyse the whole sonnet as you continue reading. This is also observed in sonnet 26 where the word ‘show’ has been used severally. ‘To witness duty, not to show my wit: --- May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it, --- To show me worthy of thy sweet respect: --- Till then, not show my head where thou mayst prove me.’ The word show has been found in a line in every structure of the 4-4-4-2 form. A basic analysis would just come up with the theme to be that of love. This would be massive generalization. An analyst has to see below this generalization and discover that the poet is hang up on showing. Shakespeare is identified as a poet who likes and is fond of playing around with key words in a sonnet. Shakespeare sonnets are found to have a dialogue or monologue where the sonnet is being dedicated to another person. To understand these sonnets and to get a grasp/understanding of the emotions depicted by the sonnets, it would be preferable that the sonnets are performed as an act. In sonnet XC, it is directed to another person and it can therefore be read through acting it out. This is evident where he says ‘then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now; --- And do not drop in for an after-loss’ (Shakespeare 90). This shows that he was telling this to another person. When acting it out, we will be able to view the emotion in the actor when he is telling the other to show hate now if he will ever show hate. Hence another way to read the Shakespeare sonnets is to come up with an act when the sonnet involves a dialogue. This may not be applicable in all sonnets though. This can be acted out by two people where one is the one reciting the sonnet to the other who is supposedly supposed to be hating. To the viewer, who would be termed as the reader of the sonnet, will get to deduce through the recital what is the intended purpose of the sonnet. Being able to observe a performance of the sonnet is very significant because this will enable you to learn the character of the person who is being referred to and the person doing the reference. Using rhetoric and thematic analysis to evaluate the sonnet 116 we will not get the negativity in the mind of the sonneteers. ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds’ this is a sonnet about marriage. In between the lines there is two no’s, four not’s, two never’s and one nor. This sonnet being a short poem is an indication that the sonneteers is highly against something. Over the years according to Veldar, analysts of this sonnet have missed the point of the anger and scornfulness in the words of this sonnet. This may have arisen from the fact that there is a form of impatience from those reading to critically analyze the sonnet. This has read to the critics coming up with various criticisms towards this sonnet. It is one of the most quoted sonnets from Shakespeare but some has said it to be a philosophical that does not feel personal at all. This sonnet is interested in bringing out that love should not just end and it should be there forever as long as it exists ‘Love's not time's fool ---’. Basic analysis will show this to be a sonnet on what love should be but from the negativity it should hit the readers mind that this is more of a rebuttal. For years this poem has been understood to mean that love is immutable and eternal but they have missed a point so crucial in understanding of the poem. They miss the anger in the poets voice that is depicted by his use of negated words such as never, not, no, and nor. Veldar has given an example of a student who was asked to remove all unnecessary words from the Shakespeare’s sonnet. The result was a poem that seemed to preserve the theme of the poem. But this theme is the generalized theme. The poem got to lose some of the styles that the poet intended for them to be there. One such style that is lost is repetition. This is brought about by doing away with words that keep repeating themselves. Some critics termed Shakespeare as being dull in sonnet 105 due to this repetitive nature in his poem but they fail to understand this as a way of laying emphasis on what the poet want the reader to depict from the poem. Sonnet 105 is a poem about the Christianity trinity and hence repeating the key words one and three is an acceptable style in this poem because the trinity talks about three beings that make one (Veldar 41). What the readers have failed to realize was that this poem was a clever and kind of rude reply to Christians who had accused him of erotic idolatry and thus his use of the holy trinity in this sonnet. This is a point in understanding the poet that has often been overlooked. In Shakespeare’s sonnets it is good not to ask what the poet has said but as good analyst we should be asking what is Shakespeare up to. This means that we should not be going through a poem and trying to depict what the poem is saying but we should be analyzing what the poet is trying to do. This will help do analysis without generalizing the whole sonnet as having a particular theme say love. Analysis will hence be done in a manner that will derive variant in the Shakespeare sonnets that the poet has so perfectly been able to hide from being depicted by a glance and hence one has to be keen in the analysis they are doing. Shakespeare is a poet who is well known to play around with words in his sonnets and a general theme has been picked on the sonnets and they have been grouped according to the themes of love, passing of time, immortality and beauty. Conclusion Over the years, the analysis made on sonnets was quite generalized and this has given room for critics to come up with their ideas against the sonnets. Some critics have generalized the sonnets to be a representation of love poems just as the Mona Lisa painting is considered to be a representation of a beautiful woman. The critics say that the Shakespeare sonnets should not be viewed as nothing more but love poems. This is a point that Veldar is dissatisfied with in her article because in her view, it is not just the general meaning that one should get from the sonnets but one should try and get the deeper meaning of the writer. There is a lot of generalization that exists towards the meaning and understanding of the Shakespeare sonnets. They are generalized into various themes such as: Love, beauty, immortality and passage of time. These are generalized themes that should not pass for all the sonnets. The sonnets may want to talk about love but it is good to understand in what way he is portraying this in the poems using the styles such as repetition, rhyme scheme structure and the pattern in the words within the sonnet. We should not view the Shakespeare sonnets as having a static axis that depicts similarity. We should however view the sonnets as having a dynamic twist in the changes in emotions. Having analyzed how to read the various sonnets, it is my opinion that after reading this paper you will be able to see the diversity in Shakespeare’s sonnets and not generalize the understanding. Works Cited Shakespeare. Shakespeare sonnet. Oxquarry Books Ltd. 1609. Web. October 30, 2013. Pp 1-154. http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/4. Stapleton. Shakespeare's Man Right Fair as Sonnet Lady. Texas Studies in Literature and Language 46 (2004): 272. Veldar, Helen. Shakespeare's Sonnets: Reading for Difference. Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 47, No. 6 (Mar., 1994). pp. 33-50. Wells, Stanley and Michael Dobson. The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 439.   Read More