How to Analyze Shakespeare’s Sonnets

[Music] [Applause] my name is Carly Stevens I'm the author of the young adult fantasy fairy and rising and this is English nerd so today I wanted to give you some basic tips about how to analyze Shakespeare's sonnets it sounds like a daunting task but there are actually a lot of simple things that you can do to figure out what it means and go a little bit deeper than that so today we're going to look at Shakespeare's Twelfth sonnet it's one of my favorites if you want to listen to this entire sonnet which I would recommend that you do if you have the opportunity then there's a lovely version read by David Tennant which you can find on youtube so I would recommend this you look that up if you get the chance so I'm gonna start with some of the basics here is the poem so you can take a look at that the first thing that you need to know about should experience on it's just as far as basic information goes is that every Shakespearean sonnet with the exception of I think one has 14 lines and the rhyme scheme is always the same so this is the way that the rhyme scheme looks the letters correspond to the last sound or the last word in the line and if it matches up with one later on so Shakespearean sonnets rhyme scheme will be a b a b c d c d e f e f g g so a more poetic technical language that means that there are three quatrains three groups of four lines that rhyme with each other and then one couplet at the end in addition to having a very set rhyme scheme every time you also have meters so in Shakespearean sonnets and in fact in his in his plays as well he uses a lot of I am big pentameter I am big pentameter is again a pretty lofty word for an idea that's not that foreign to us actually I am pick pentameter just means that there's a particular beat to the line so it goes to da da da da da da da da or unaccented syllable followed by accented syllable da da five times data that I thought I thought that up so that's where the pent in pentameter comes from Penta means five so if you think about pentagon for instance has the five sides so and then I am is that a nice nted accented combo so da repeated the five times that don't that I thought out of that so shall I compare thee to a summers day when I had to count the clock that tells the time to be or not to be that is the question he uses iambic pentameter a whole lot so that is going to be the basic meter for every sonnet in this case the first line is as I just said when I do count the clock that tells the time so every line will have approximately ten syllables in it I say approximately because it's possible that there could be an eleventh unaccented syllable when he's a few and fancy so rhyme and meter we have that taken care of the all of Shakespeare's sonnets deal with some kind of big question or big theme that he's considering throughout the sonnet basically the format goes this way the first two quatrains as you can see going back to this diagram the first two quatrains introduced the idea developed the idea and then there's a turn right before that third quatrain the turn is called the Volta and the Volta means that Shakespeare is shifting his focus very often he'll go from lofty general nature related metaphors to explain his ideas to more specifically considering the person in front of him or the person who commissioned the sonnet so he's still considering the same idea but now he's shifting his focus very often there will be some kind of transition word so in the case of this son there's then then of thy Beauty do I question make and the couplet at the end is going to either answer the question or more often summarize some kind of concluding thought about it so in this case we start off with when I do count the clock that tells the time and see the brave day sunk in hideous night so he gives all these different metaphors about time passing about days ending about flowers dying all of that and there's the vault of the turn then of thy Beauty do I question make that thou among the wastes of time must go so now he's considering not only how everything tends from life to death how everything you know every day must end but now he's thinking about this person who is I believe the the nobleman who who commissioned a lot of these then of thy Beauty do I question make now I turn my attention to you specifically and see that time is going to also have that same effect on you so he's conspirators considering time he's considering how beauty fades and there's an implicit question there about what can you do about this and so the couplet gives us a sort of answer and it's a pretty standard Shakespearean answer for this nobleman his couple it goes and nothing gainst times scythe can make defence save breed to brave him when he takes thee hence so nothing can go against the side of time cutting down everything and it's in its time except to breed except to have children and live through your legacy that way so these themes are pretty common in Shakespeare if you are analyzing a Shakespearean sonnet look for the themes of love of death of time of beauty I would say that those are the big four not every sonnet is about those things but the majority will be considering aspects of those ideas and the reason I think that people use sonnets to consider ideas like love and time is that talking about them in more of an essay format or a straightforward format doesn't get across the truth of it quite as well as a metaphor might do you know how what is love like if you give a dictionary definition it's not going to cut it but if you give a really apt metaphor for what it's like you're actually getting closer to the truth than if you were to the less less poetic I suppose so once you have rhymin meter down once you understand the basic question and answer or the gist of what Shakespeare is considering throughout his poem then you can start looking at the more specifically the metaphors that he uses and the other literary devices so you can look for things like alliteration you can look for how he develops his metaphors just as an example in sonnet 12 the reason that I like sonnet 12 actually is just the first line when I do count the clock that tells the time he uses alliteration count the clock tells the time to a really good effect it actually sounds like a clock ticking when I do count the clock that tells the time which i think is pretty nifty so from there you can do kind of a deep dive into some of the the very finer points of what's going on but those are the basic things you need to know I hope this was helpful for you let me know if you have any questions at all down below and I'll try to get to those as soon as I can all right make sure to subscribe if you have not done so already and I'll see you next Monday bye

Channel: English Nerd

Views: 10,529

Rating: 4.9609756 out of 5

Keywords: english nerd, Shakespeare sonnet, shakespeare's sonnets, shakespeare sonnets, analyzing shakespeare, analyzing sonnets, analyze sonnets, analyze a sonnet, how to analyze a sonnet, how to analyze shakespeare, how to analyze shakespearean sonnets, how to analyze sonnets, shakespearean sonnets, shakespeare sonnet 12

Id: slVW2mS6C-Q

Length: 8min 37sec (517 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 24 2020