Shakespeare unlocked his heart. Thanks to the renewed popularity of poetry in the romantic era, the Sonnets quickly became part of the canon of literature in the English language. Interestingly, the biographical aspect continued to be a main source of interest, with continued speculation about the subjects of the poem. Even now as the scholarship focuses heartily on the discussions of the subjects of the Sonnets and their historical background, the Sonnets have reatined their popularity and their appeal to both heart and mind,and have kept them a favorite for students and poetry lovers everywhere.
Literature Department. More posts by James. He is a dignified man. He has been director of that important centre of advanced study, The Shakespeare Institute; editor of the internationally renowned journal Shakespeare Survey ; general editor of the Oxford Complete Works of Shakespeare; and vice-chair of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He is now honorary president of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, the custodian of Shakespeare properties and archives which sponsors these talks.
Each organization has grown more lustrous through its association with him. Stanley is a deeply learned man. He is a brilliant and intuitive close reader of the poetry, has an exhaustive memory for stage moments, and is an expert on the early modern period. He weaves all these strands of knowledge and technique together in his textual editing, in his literary interpretation, in his ability to share his erudition with people of all ages, stations, and educational backgrounds.
He is always eager to engage with new ideas, but he is also frank and fearless in assessing them. At the same time, Stanley is supremely generous. He has been kind to so many, has created professional opportunities for so many, that we can never know his true impact worldwide.
Having collaborated with Stanley on some publication projects, I like to think that I have a personal relationship with him. What always surprises me is how many Shakespeare lovers feel that they have personal relationships with Stanley. Somehow, he makes us all feel special to him. So many anecdotes and experiences come back to me, but I most cherish the story from a professor in Russia who had worked to keep Shakespeare studies alive through all the Soviet years.
When she finally got the chance, this keeper of the Shakespeare flame organized a conference for her Russian colleagues. The conference achieved a sublime authority when Stanley agreed to deliver their keynote lecture. My Russian friend remembered every line of the lecture. But she also recalled, with emotion, that Stanley had sat through all the other sessions of the conference, listening to papers delivered in Russian, presumably not himself knowing a word of Russian, but honouring the occasion, honouring the speakers, welcoming them to join him in the global circle of all who honour Shakespeare.
Shakespeare was primarily a public writer, an entertainer, a teller of tales about people other than himself, two of them — Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece - in narrative verse, but mostly dramas which cast only an oblique light on the mind and emotions of their writer.
But he also wrote independent sonnets and almost all in the first person singular, as if they were personal utterances. They are at once some of the most famous, the most personally revealing, and the most badly misunderstood poems ever written.
In this talk I want to address the much disputed question of how personal they are, what they tell us about their author. It is helpful to think of their literary context.
Seventeen sequences of sonnets were published between and when the vogue came to a sudden end. Shakespeare was writing sonnets at the same time, both as stand-alone poems and as part of the poetic fabric of his plays. Current scholarly studies date most of his independently written sonnets to the early s, when the vogue was at its height. But there is one crucial difference.
While the other writers may have been addressing a particular love object, often under a fictionalized name such as Celia, Delia, Phyllis, Diana, Fidessa and so on, Shakespeare was writing privately, with apparently no intention of publication; and not a single one of his sonnets names an addressee.
But this does not mean that he was not writing independent sonnets during these years. Shakespeare could certainly have found a publisher for sonnets during this period, as is clear from the fact that two of them did actually appear under his name but without his permission in a pirated publication, The Passionate Pilgrim, of or Somewhat different versions of these two poems were to appear as Sonnets and in the collection published in It used to be supposed that the earlier-printed versions were corrupt, but more recent thought suggests that they are printed in the form in which Shakespeare first wrote them, and that the versions represent his revisions.
This impression is consonant with the first printed reference to any sonnets by Shakespeare, which appeared in in a book by the literary chronicler Francis Meres. We should bear in mind that the sonnets that Meres knew about are not necessarily among those that have survived. At the time Meres was writing, in , no non-dramatic sonnet by Shakespeare had appeared in print. Clearly Meres had inside knowledge; he may have known Shakespeare personally.
Did he mean that Shakespeare had written sonnets to commission by unidentified patrons? Circulation of poems in manuscript was common at the time, but if, as I suspect, these are really poems that their author preferred to keep under wraps, the fact that they nevertheless got into print suggests either that he must have been astonishingly indiscreet in allowing them to be copied, or that one or more members of his inner circle must have betrayed his confidence. When my love swears that she is made of truth I do believe her though I know she lies, That she might think me some untutored youth Unskilful in the world's false forgeries.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, Although I know my years be past the best, I, smiling, credit her false-speaking tongue, Outfacing faults in love with love's ill rest. But wherefore says my love that she is young, And wherefore say not I that I am old? What our page attempts to do is collectively reconcile and represent the many prevalent themes running through much of the Romantic writing, especially through one of the more popular mediums — the sonnet.
We will also be looking at the Romantic poets and how they comment on human existence, a theme which later carries over to the Victorian period and the 20th century poets. The sonnet is a fourteen line poem written in Iambic Pentameter with a rhyme scheme particular to the type of sonnet it is.
The Italian, or Petrarchan sonnet is a sonnet form named after Francesco Petrarch and first introduced to English poetry in the 16th century by Sir Thomas Wyatt.
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