What is a Sonnet? 📜 | PLUS analysis of Sonnet 18 | That is The Question | Shakespeare's Globe

what is a sonnet if you think Shakespeare there's a good chance the first lines that come to mind are either to be or not to be that is the question or shall I compare thee to a summer's day we've taken the first line from his tragedy Hamlet as the inspiration for our series title but what about the second it's from Shakespeare's most famous sonnet one line from over 2 000 lines of poetry published in 1609 as his collection Shakespeare's sonnets we love a basic title some of it sonnets have become shortcuts to romantic expression scrawled on a Valentine's card or used to sell chocolates but the collection is actually way darker and more complex than its modern reputation might suggest in this episode we'll dive into the lyrical world of Shakespeare sonnets and discover what makes a sonnet a sonnet a small question but many answers I'm going to assume that the question refers to the shakespeareans on it because the word sonnet referred to all sorts of shortish poems in Shakespeare's day one collection called songs and sonnets not composed by Shakespeare doesn't contain any 14 line poems at all as with all poetry there's a set of rules which give structure to the writing a Shakespearean sonnet is a 14-line poem in iambic pentameter that familiar heartbeat rhythm verse that Shakespeare uses in most of his plays Shakespeare's consistency in following this sonnet form is one of the reasons we have such a clear sense of this on its definition today we've inherited his sense of precision not his society's more relaxed definition of the form but Shakespeare didn't invent it the sonnet emerged in the 13th century in Italy and was most closely associated with the poet petrarch it was petroc who landed on the length of 14 lines usually divided into two thoughts or ideas an eight-line bit called an octave followed by a six line part called a cessnet this was enough scope to introduce some thorny romantic problem in the octave before resolving it in the set the petrakhan sonnet had a huge burst of popularity in England during Shakespeare's life like a lot of things in the Renaissance we got them in England a century and a half after Italy Shakespeare was never one to leave something untinkered with when he started writing Sonics he played around with the rhyme scheme and also reshaped the 14 lines into three sets of four line units called quatrains followed by a couplet or two rhyming lines to finish things off that meant he had more flexibility about where he put the emotional or intellectual turn in the poem the hinge known as The Vault that stopped the poem being just a one-dimensional account of something lovely think of it like the plot twist at the climax of a film the kind that would make you gasp or reassess everything that you'd just seen as is evident across his Works Shakespeare came to adore the sonnet writing more than 150 that we know about and probably others that have been lost it was a real Goldilocks length for him not so long that the reader would get distracted and start thinking about dinner not so short as to prevent Shakespeare having fun with extended metaphors or sophisticated imagery in other words just right let's use an example Shakespeare's most famous on it shall I compare thee to a summer's day shall I compare thee to a summer's day Thou Art more lovely and more temperate rough winds do shake the darling buds of May and Summer's lease hath all too sure to date sometimes too hot the eye of Heaven shines and often it's his gold complexion dimmed and every fare from Fair sometime declines by chance on Nature's changing course untrimmed but by eternal Summer shall not fade nor lose possession of that fair thou earst nor shall death brag thou wonderest in his shade when in Eternal lines to time thou growest so long as men can breathe or eyes can see so long lives this and this gives life to thee the first quatrain sets out the idea of the poem The Beloved object of the poem is more Exquisite even than summer because Summer Fades and Withers the next quatrain continues to bash summer complaining that it can be searingly hot or boringly overcast but this part also brings in the idea that a person's beauty is subject to the same sort of seasonal fading the third quadrain asserts that the Beloved won't fade like summer but will remain Young and Beautiful forever but the couplet brings in a sly little bit of ambiguity the object's Beauty will last forever because it will be memorialized in the sonnet itself so where does that leave the aging body of the Beloved it's an awful lot of complex thought to cram into 14 lines you might now be wondering who this beloved is and this is where the story of Shakespeare's sonnets gets interesting most of his sonnets were published in 1609 in a collection of 154 numbered poems although they don't have a totally clear narrative they seem to divide between the first 126 that have spoken to a beautiful young man and the final 28 that are about a beautiful woman whose description implies she is a woman of color Scholars are divided as to whether these people were real and whether they reflect Shakespeare's own feelings about a male and female lover academics have identified various candidates perhaps the fair youth is one or both of Shakespeare's aristocratic patrons the Earl of Southampton and the Earl of Pembroke and some people have suggested that the mysterious woman might be the poet Emilia basano Lanier or a woman named Lucy Morgan who ran a brothel in Clark and well if you're curious we have a whole episode dedicated to the discussion around Shakespeare's sexuality click the pop up to find out more but regardless of whether these figures were real individuals the richness of the sequence allows the sonnets to express alternate forms of Desire outside the constraining boxes of straight white heteronormativity which might explain why they still enthrall us today foreign inspired try your hand at writing your own sonnet in the comments below or drop us a Shakespeare question of your own if you like this video give us a thumbs up finally don't forget to subscribe to the Shakespeare's Globe YouTube channel for more of that is the question and hit the notification Bell to get an alert when we post a new video thanks again and we'll see you next time

Channel: Shakespeare's Globe

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Keywords: sonnet 18, sonnets, what is a sonnet, petrarch, learn, shall I compare thee to a summers day, thou art more temperate, fair youth, dark lady, dr will tosh, shakespeare, globe theatre, elizabethan, emilia bassano lanier, earl of southhampton, earl of pembroke, poetry, poem, romantic poem, analysis, teaching sonnets, shakespeare's globe, famous poems, valentines, was shakespeare gay, lgbtqia, history, how to write sonnet, quatrain, sestet, iambic pentameter, couplet, volta, petrarchan sonnet

Id: VzHxpQ_yXE0

Length: 7min 18sec (438 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 15 2023