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73-760: Q1 Q2 Q3 C Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly? Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy. Why lov’st thou that which thou receiv’st not gladly, Or else receiv’st with pleasure thine annoy? If the true concord of well-tuned sounds, By unions married, do offend thine ear, They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear. Mark how one string, sweet husband to another, Strikes each in each by mutual ordering; Resembling sire and child and happy mother, Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing: Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one, Sings this to thee: “Thou single wilt prove none.” 4 8 12 14 Sonnet 8

146-499: A definition, but the closeness of union to unison keeps the musical connotation present in the reader's mind. Then in line 8, "the parts that thou shouldst bear" still keeps the idea that music and family are one by saying a part that is played in the family, or with a musical instrument in an orchestra. "resembling sire and child and happy mother" in line 11 alludes to the Holy Family, Mary, Jesus, and Joseph as they were depicted as

219-636: A final couplet . The sonnets are composed in iambic pentameter , the metre used in Shakespeare's plays. The rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Sonnets using this scheme are known as Shakespearean sonnets, or English sonnets, or Elizabethan sonnets. Often, at the end of the third quatrain occurs the volta ("turn"), where the mood of the poem shifts, and the poet expresses a turn of thought. The exceptions are sonnets 99 , 126 , and 145 . Number 99 has fifteen lines. Number 126 consists of six couplets, and two blank lines marked with italic brackets; 145

292-399: A final extrametrical syllable or feminine ending : In line 3, "Why lov'st thou" means "why do you like". It is followed by "thou receiv'st" which activates a sexual tone, emphasized by "receiv'st with pleasure" in line 4. The subject of the poem is having affairs; running around receiving pleasures, but with no intention of settling down. Yet "thine annoy" means what gives one pain, indicates

365-591: A former lover who pursued, seduced, and finally abandoned her. She recounts in detail the speech her lover gave to her which seduced her. She concludes her story by conceding that she would fall for the young man's false charms again. As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras: so the sweete wittie soule of Ouid liues in mellifluous & hony-tongued Shakespeare, witnes his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends, &c. In his plays, Shakespeare himself seemed to be

438-598: A happy family in multiple church paintings during the time this sonnet was written. The poet warns the subject against staying single in the last line, "‘Thou single wilt prove none.’" As a single person, a man will accomplish nothing. Sonnet 8, published in the 1609 Quarto, is part of the Fair Youth sequence (sonnets 1–126), which makes up the largest portion of Shakespeare’s sonnets (see the Rival Poet sequence). The Fair Youth sonnets center around one subject, who

511-475: A market a few days before and glued to the doorframe. The text of the couplets is often traditional and contains hopes for prosperity. Other chunlian reflect more recent concerns. For example, the CCTV New Year's Gala usually promotes couplets reflecting current political themes in mainland China . Some duilian may consist of two lines of four characters each. Duilian are read from top to bottom where

584-432: A mystery. If Shakespeare's patron and friend was Pembroke, Shakespeare was not the only poet who praised his beauty; Francis Davison did in a sonnet that is the preface to Davison's quarto A Poetical Rhapsody (1608), which was published just before Shakespeare's Sonnets . John Davies of Hereford , Samuel Daniel , George Chapman , Christopher Marlowe , and Ben Jonson are also candidates that find support among clues in

657-456: A possessive form in its title, which is followed by its own assertion of the author's name. This time the possessive word, "Lover's", refers to a woman, who becomes the primary "speaker" of the work. "A Lover's Complaint" begins with a young woman weeping at the edge of a river, into which she throws torn-up letters, rings, and other tokens of love. An old man nearby approaches her and asks the reason for her sorrow. She responds by telling him of

730-400: A satiric critic of sonnets—the allusions to them are often scornful. Then he went on to create one of the longest sonnet-sequences of his era, a sequence that took some sharp turns away from the tradition. He may have been inspired out of literary ambition, and a desire to carve new paths apart from the well-worn tradition. Or he may have been inspired by biographical elements in his life. It

803-502: A sonnet, which serves as proof that they have fallen in love. In All’s Well that Ends Well , a partial sonnet is read, and Bertram comments, "He shall be whipp'd through the army with this rhyme in's forehead." In Henry V , the Dauphin suggests he will compose a sonnet to his horse. The sonnets that Shakespeare satirizes in his plays are sonnets written in the tradition of Petrarch and Sidney, whereas Shakespeare's sonnets published in

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876-532: A word or passage has a concrete meaning or an abstract meaning; laying that kind of perplexity in the reader's path for the reader to deal with is an essential part of reading the sonnets—the reader doesn't always benefit from having knots untangled and double-meanings simplified by the experts, according to Hammond. During the eighteenth century, The Sonnets ' reputation in England was relatively low; in 1805, The Critical Review credited John Milton with

949-471: Is a quarto published in 1609 titled Shake-speare's Sonnets. It contains 154 sonnets, which are followed by the long poem " A Lover's Complaint ". Thirteen copies of the quarto have survived in fairly good shape. There is evidence in a note on the title page of one of the extant copies that the great Elizabethan actor Edward Alleyn bought a copy in June 1609 for one shilling. The sonnets cover such themes as

1022-401: Is a young, fair man. There is debate as to whom the subject is. Some theorize the sonnets are written about William Herbert , Earl of Pembroke. Henry Wriothesley , Earl of Southampton, has also been suggested as the fair youth. The first 17 sonnets (including Sonnet 8) urge the young man to marry and have children. The rest of the sonnets in the sequence seek to immortalize the fair youth within

1095-406: Is against the idea of marriage. The young man, the subject of the sonnet, is chided for choosing to be single. The poet uses comparisons with music and marriage, likening the "true concord of well-tuned sounds" to a marriage. It is appropriate that Sonnet 8, a sonnet of musical descant, is placed as the 8th sonnet, since an " eight " is a "true concord." Sonnet 128,like Sonnet 8, suggests the octave of

1168-402: Is among the string of procreation sonnets written by Shakespeare. The procreation sonnets are sonnets 1–17. All share the theme of urging a young man to marry and have children, insisting they are key to a harmonious life. In line 6, "Unions" can have two different meanings: that which is blatant to marriage and the other referring to harmonies. The Oxford English Dictionary does not give this as

1241-417: Is holy palmers' kiss. ROMEO Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too? JULIET Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer. ROMEO O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do; They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair. JULIET Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake. ROMEO Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take. Couplet The word "couplet" comes from

1314-406: Is in iambic tetrameters , not pentameters. In one other variation on the standard structure, found for example in sonnet 29 , the rhyme scheme is changed by repeating the second (B) rhyme of quatrain one as the second (F) rhyme of quatrain three. Apart from rhyme, and considering only the arrangement of ideas, and the placement of the volta, a number of sonnets maintain the two-part organization of

1387-488: Is ironically undermining the assumption that, because homosexual sex is non-reproductive, homoerotic desire is 'unnatural'." Shakespeare%27s sonnets William Shakespeare (1564–1616) wrote sonnets on a variety of themes. When discussing or referring to Shakespeare's sonnets, it is almost always a reference to the 154 sonnets that were first published all together in a quarto in 1609. However, there are six additional sonnets that Shakespeare wrote and included in

1460-403: Is not written in the sonnet form, but is composed of 47 seven-line stanzas written in rhyme royal . It is an example of a normal feature of the two-part poetic form, in which the first part expresses the male point of view, and the second part contrasts or complements the first part with the female's point of view. The first part of the quarto, the 154 sonnets, considers frustrated male desire, and

1533-513: Is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare . It is a procreation sonnet within the Fair Youth sequence. As with the other procreation sonnets, it urges a young man to settle down with a wife and to have children. It insists a family is the key to living a harmonious, peaceful life. Sonnet 8 by William Shakespeare empathizes with the subject, who

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1606-441: Is predominantly written in rhyming couplets, and Chaucer also incorporated a concluding couplet into his rhyme royal stanza. Similarly, Shakespearean sonnets often employ rhyming couplets at the end to emphasize the theme. Take one of Shakespeare's most famous sonnets, Sonnet 18 , for example (the rhyming couplet is shown in italics): In the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth-century English rhyming couplets achieved

1679-406: Is said. Soon the speaker rebukes her for enslaving his fair friend (sonnet 133). He can't abide the triangular relationship, and it ends with him rejecting her. As with the Fair Youth, there have been many attempts to identify her with a real historical individual. Lucy Negro, Mary Fitton , Emilia Lanier , Elizabeth Wriothesley , and others have been suggested. The Rival Poet's identity remains

1752-414: Is thought that the biographical aspects have been over-explored and over-speculated on, especially in the face of a paucity of evidence. The critical focus has turned instead (through New Criticism and by scholars such as Stephen Booth and Helen Vendler) to the text itself, which is studied and appreciated linguistically as a "highly complex structure of language and ideas". Besides the biographic and

1825-638: The First Folio . Thorpe would have been unlikely to have addressed a lord as "Mr", but there may be an explanation, perhaps that form of address came from the author, who wanted to refer to Herbert at an earlier time—when Herbert was a "younger man". There is a later dedication to Herbert in another quarto of verse, Ben Jonson's Epigrammes (1616), in which the text of Jonson's dedication begins, "MY LORD, While you cannot change your merit, I dare not change your title … " Jonson's emphasis on Pembroke's title, and his comment, seem to be chiding someone else who had

1898-460: The kural venpa metre from which the title of the work was derived centuries later. Each Kural couplet is made of exactly 7 words—4 in the first line and 3 in the second. The first word may rhyme with the fourth or the fifth word. Below is an example of a couplet: In Hindi , a couplet is called a doha , while in Urdu , it is called a sher . Couplets were the most common form of poetry between

1971-405: The "W.H." of Shakespeare's dedication is Sidney's nephew and heir, William Herbert . The idea that the persona referred to as the speaker of Shakespeare's sonnets might be Shakespeare himself, is aggressively repudiated by scholars; however, the title of the quarto does seem to encourage that kind of speculation. The first 17 poems, traditionally called the procreation sonnets , are addressed to

2044-715: The "little love-god" Cupid . The publisher, Thomas Thorpe , entered the book in the Stationers' Register on 20 May 1609: Whether Thorpe used an authorised manuscript from Shakespeare or an unauthorised copy is unknown. George Eld printed the quarto, and the run was divided between the booksellers William Aspley and John Wright . Shakespeare's Sonnets include a dedication to "Mr. W.H.": TO.THE.ONLIE.BEGETTER.OF. THESE.INSUING.SONNETS. Mr.W.H.   ALL.HAPPINESSE. AND.THAT.ETERNITIE. PROMISED. BY. OUR.EVER-LIVING.POET. WISHETH. THE.WELL-WISHING. ADVENTURER.IN. SETTING. FORTH. The upper case letters and

2117-488: The 12th and 18th Centuries, in Hidustani. Famous poets include Kabir , Tulsidas and Rahim Khan-i-Khanan . Kabir (also known as Kabirdas) is thought to be one of the greatest composers of Hindustani couplets. The American poet J. V. Cunningham was noted for many distichs included in the various forms of epigrams included in his poetry collections, as exampled here: Deep summer, and time passes. Sorrow wastes To

2190-559: The 154 sonnets published in the 1609, because they may lack the deep introspection, for example, and they are written to serve the needs of a performance, exposition or narrative. In Shakespeare's early comedies, the sonnets and sonnet-making of his characters are often objects of satire. In Two Gentlemen of Verona , sonnet-writing is portrayed cynically as a seduction technique. In Love's Labour's Lost , sonnets are portrayed as evidence that love can render men weak and foolish. In Much Ado About Nothing , Beatrice and Benedick each write

2263-443: The 17th century and Alexander Pope in the 18th century were both well known for their writing in heroic couplets. The Poetic epigram is also in the couplet form. Couplets can also appear as part of more complex rhyme schemes , such as sonnets . Rhyming couplets are one of the simplest rhyme schemes in poetry. Because the rhyme comes so quickly, it tends to call attention to itself. Good rhyming couplets tend to "explode" as both

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2336-463: The Dark Lady. The speaker expresses admiration for the Fair Youth's beauty, and—if reading the sonnets in chronological order as published—later has an affair with the Dark Lady, then so does the Fair Youth. Current linguistic analysis and historical evidence suggests, however, that the sonnets to the Dark Lady were composed first (around 1591–95), the procreation sonnets next, and the later sonnets to

2409-481: The Fair Youth last (1597–1603). It is not known whether the poems and their characters are fiction or autobiographical; scholars who find the sonnets to be autobiographical have attempted to identify the characters with historical individuals. The "Fair Youth" is the unnamed young man addressed by the devoted poet in the greatest sequence of the sonnets ( 1 – 126 ). The young man is handsome, self-centred, universally admired and much sought after. The sequence begins with

2482-583: The French word meaning "two pieces of iron riveted or hinged together". The term "couplet" was first used to describe successive lines of verse in Sir P. Sidney's Arcadia in 1590: "In singing some short coplets, whereto the one halfe beginning, the other halfe should answere." While couplets traditionally rhyme, not all do. Poems may use white space to mark out couplets if they do not rhyme. Couplets in iambic pentameter are called heroic couplets . John Dryden in

2555-519: The Italian sonnet. In that case the term "octave" and "sestet" are commonly used to refer to the sonnet's first eight lines followed by the remaining six lines. There are other line-groupings as well, as Shakespeare finds inventive ways with the content of the fourteen-line poems. When analysed as characters, the subjects of the sonnets are usually referred to as the Fair Youth, the Rival Poet, and

2628-535: The Sonnets are the fall of Essex and then the gunpowder plotters' executions in 1606, which puts Southampton at the age of 33, and then 39 when the sonnets were published, when he would be past the age when he would be referred to as a "lovely boy" or "fair youth". Authors such as Thomas Tyrwhitt and Oscar Wilde proposed that the Fair Youth was William Hughes, a seductive young actor who played female roles in Shakespeare's plays. Particularly, Wilde claimed that he

2701-553: The audacity to use the wrong title, as perhaps is the case in Shakespeare's dedication. Henry Wriothesley (the Earl of Southampton ), with initials reversed, has received a great deal of consideration as a likely possibility. He was the dedicatee of Shakespeare's poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece . Southampton was also known for his good looks. Other suggestions include: The sonnets are almost all constructed using three quatrains (four-line stanzas ) followed by

2774-475: The author was out of the country or dead, which suggests that Shakespeare was not in London during the last stage of printing. However, Thorpe's entire corpus of such consists of only four dedications and three prefaces. It has been suggested that Thorpe signing the dedication, rather than the author, might indicate that Thorpe published the work without obtaining Shakespeare's permission. Though Thorpe's taking on

2847-416: The dedication may be explained by the great demands of business and travel that Shakespeare was facing at this time, which may have caused him to deal with the printing production in haste before rushing out of town. After all, May 1609 was an extraordinary time: That month saw a serious outbreak of the plague, which shut down the theatres, and also caused many to flee London. Plus Shakespeare's theatre company

2920-620: The early Middle English period through the imitation of medieval Latin and Old French models. The earliest surviving examples are a metrical paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer in short-line couplets, and the Poema Morale in septenary (or "heptameter") couplets, both dating from the twelfth century. Rhyming couplets were often used in Middle English and early modern English poetry. Chaucer 's Canterbury Tales , for instance,

2993-413: The end of the play Henry V is written in the form of a sonnet ("Thus far with rough, and all-unable pen…"). Formal epilogues were established as a theatrical tradition, and occur in 13 of Shakespeare's plays. In Henry V , the character of Chorus, who has addressed the audience a few times during the play, speaks the wide-ranging epilogue/sonnet. It begins by allowing that the play may not have presented

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3066-409: The fair youth (sonnet 152). The identity of the Fair Youth has been the subject of speculation among scholars. One popular theory is that he was Henry Wriothesley , the 3rd Earl of Southampton; this is based in part on the idea that his physical features, age, and personality might fairly match the young man in the sonnets. He was both an admirer and patron of Shakespeare and was considered one of

3139-522: The first line starts from the right. Tamil literature contains some of the notable examples of ancient couplet poetry. The Tamil language has a rich and refined grammar for couplet poetry, and distichs in Tamil poetry follow the venpa metre. One of the most notable examples of Tamil couplet poetry is the ancient Tamil moral text of the Tirukkural , which contains a total of 1330 couplets written in

3212-506: The idea of a homosexual relationship due to choice of wording in some sonnets (see Sonnet 20 ). During the era in which Shakespeare's sonnets were written, any "sexual acts that do not result in reproduction" were condemned. In David Hawkes's article, 'Sodomy, Usury, and the Narrative of Shakespeare's Sonnets', he "argues that by using the language of 'unnatural' usury to expound the merits of 'natural' marriage and procreation, Shakespeare

3285-437: The intervals between 8 and 128 i.e. 8–16, 16–32, 32–64, 64–128, span four octaves, the normal range of the keyboard of a virginal in Shakespeare's time." Shakespeare does this to emphasize the beauty and importance of having a family. The sonnet emphasizes the notion that the subject will not reach true harmony if he does not settle down with a wife and children. His life will be in discord if he chooses to continue being single. It

3358-489: The last lines of which contain Lucrece's complaint. Other examples are found in the works of Michael Drayton , Thomas Lodge , Richard Barnfield , and others. The young man of the sonnets and the young man of "A Lover's Complaint" provide a thematic link between the two parts. In each part the young man is handsome, wealthy and promiscuous, unreliable and admired by all. Like the sonnets, " A Lover's Complaint " also has

3431-504: The linguistic approaches, another way of considering Shakespeare's sonnets is in the context of the culture and literature that surrounds them. Gerald Hammond, in his book The Reader and the Young Man Sonnets , suggests that the non-expert reader, who is thoughtful and engaged, does not need that much help in understanding the sonnets: though, he states, the reader may often feel mystified when trying to decide, for example, if

3504-419: The meter. After Berowne is caught breaking his vow, and exposed by the sonnet he composed, he passionately renounces speech that is affected, and vows to prefer plain country speech. Ironically, when proclaiming this he demonstrates that he can't seem to avoid rich courtly language, and his speech happens to fall into the meter and rhyme of a sonnet. ("O, never will I trust to speeches penned…") The epilogue at

3577-435: The most prominent nobles of the period. It is also noted that Shakespeare's 1593 poem Venus and Adonis is dedicated to Southampton and, in that poem a young man, Adonis, is encouraged by the goddess of love, Venus, to beget a child, which is a theme in the sonnets. Here are the verses from Venus and Adonis : A problem with identifying the fair youth with Southampton is that the most certainly datable events referred to in

3650-499: The passage of time, love, infidelity, jealousy, beauty and mortality. The first 126 are addressed to a young man; the last 28 are either addressed to, or refer to, a woman. (Sonnets 138 and 144 had previously been published in the 1599 miscellany The Passionate Pilgrim .) The title of the quarto, Shake-speare's Sonnets , is consistent with the entry in the Stationers' Register . The title appears in upper case lettering on

3723-518: The perfection of the English sonnet. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Shakespeare and Milton seemed to be on an equal footing, but critics, burdened by an over-emphasis on biographical explorations, continued to contend with each other for decades on this point. Like all Shakespeare's works, Shakespeare's Sonnets have been reprinted many times. Prominent editions include: There are sonnets written by Shakespeare that occur in his plays, and these include his earliest sonnets. They differ from

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3796-550: The plays Romeo and Juliet , Henry V and Love's Labour's Lost . There is also a partial sonnet found in the play Edward III . Shakespeare's sonnets are considered a continuation of the sonnet tradition that swept through the Renaissance from Petrarch in 14th-century Italy and was finally introduced in 16th-century England by Thomas Wyatt and was given its rhyming metre and division into quatrains by Henry Howard . With few exceptions, Shakespeare's sonnets observe

3869-461: The poet urging the young man to marry and father children (sonnets 1–17). It continues with the friendship developing with the poet's loving admiration, which at times is homoerotic in nature. Then comes a set of betrayals by the young man, as he is seduced by the Dark Lady, and they maintain a liaison (sonnets 133, 134 & 144), all of which the poet struggles to abide. It concludes with the poet's own act of betrayal, resulting in his independence from

3942-445: The poet's words. Sonnet 8 follows standard English or Shakespearean sonnet form, with 14 lines of iambic pentameter sectioned into three quatrains and a couplet , with the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The iambic pentameter's metrical structure is based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions per line (as exemplified in the fourth line): The first line features two common variations, an initial reversal and

4015-512: The prologue to the second act ("Now old desire doth in his death-bed lie…"), and set in the form of dialogue at the moment when Romeo and Juliet meet: ROMEO If I profane with my unworthiest hand This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this: My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. JULIET Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, Which mannerly devotion shows in this; For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, And palm to palm

4088-460: The quarto of 1609 take a radical turn away from that older style, and have none of the lovelorn qualities that are mocked in the plays. The sonnets published in 1609 seem to be rebelling against the tradition. In the play Love's Labour's Lost , the King and his three lords have all vowed to live like monks, to study, to give up worldly things, and to see no women. All of them break the last part of

4161-586: The rhyme and the idea come to a quick close in two lines. Here are some examples of rhyming couplets where the sense as well as the sound "rhymes": On the other hand, because rhyming couplets have such a predictable rhyme scheme, they can feel artificial and plodding. Here is a Pope parody of the predictable rhymes of his era: Regular rhyme was not originally a feature of English poetry: Old English verse came in metrically paired units somewhat analogous to couplets, but constructed according to alliterative verse principles. The rhyming couplet entered English verse in

4234-472: The scale as well as, in the case of 128 the 12 notes on the keyboard inside each octave (an association first recognized and described in detail by Fred Blick, in "Shakespeare's Musical Sonnets, Numbers 8, 128 and Pythagoras", 'The Upstart Crow, A Shakespeare Journal', Vol. XIX, (1999) 152–168.) Further, Blick notes that in Pythagorean musical theory the proportion of the octave is 1:2 and that on this basis

4307-497: The second part, "A Lover's Complaint", expresses the misery of a woman victimized by male desire. The earliest Elizabethan example of this two-part structure is Samuel Daniel's Delia ... with the Complaint of Rosamund (1592)—a sonnet sequence that tells the story of a woman being threatened by a man of higher rank, followed by the woman's complaint. This was imitated by other poets, including Shakespeare with his Rape of Lucrece ,

4380-428: The sonnets. It may be that the Rival Poet is a composite of several poets through which Shakespeare explores his sense of being threatened by competing poets. The speaker sees the Rival Poet as competition for fame and patronage. The sonnets most commonly identified as the Rival Poet group exist within the Fair Youth sequence in sonnets 78 – 86 . "A Lover's Complaint" is part two of the quarto published in 1609. It

4453-546: The speaker of the sonnets, the poet, are in a sexual relationship. She is not aristocratic, young, beautiful, intelligent or chaste. Her complexion is muddy, her breath "reeks", and she is ungainly when she walks. The relationship strongly parallels Touchstone's pursuit of Audrey in As You Like It . The Dark Lady presents an adequate receptor for male desire. She is celebrated in cocky terms that would be offensive to her, not that she would be able to read or understand what

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4526-528: The stops that follow each word of the dedication were probably intended to resemble an ancient Roman lapidary inscription or monumental brass , perhaps accentuating the declaration in Sonnet 55 that the work would confer immortality to the subjects of the work: Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes shall outlive this pow'rful rhyme The initials "T.T." are taken to refer to the publisher, Thomas Thorpe. Thorpe usually signed prefatory matter only if

4599-611: The story in its full glory. It points out that the next king would be Henry VI, who was an infant when he succeeded Henry V, and who "lost France, and made his England bleed/ Which oft our stage hath shown." It refers to the three parts of Henry VI and to Richard III — connecting the Lancastrian and the Yorkist cycles. Three sonnets are found in Romeo and Juliet : The prologue to the play ("Two households, both alike in dignity…"),

4672-588: The stylistic form of the English sonnet—the rhyme scheme , the 14 lines, and the metre . But, Shakespeare's sonnets introduce significant departures of content. Instead of expressing worshipful love for an almost goddess-like yet unobtainable female love-object, as Petrarch, Dante , and Philip Sidney had done, Shakespeare introduces a young man. He also introduces the Dark Lady . Shakespeare explores themes such as lust, homoeroticism, misogyny, infidelity, and acrimony. The primary source of Shakespeare's sonnets

4745-413: The subject is unhappy with his situation. There are some theories which indicate a homosexual relationship between the poet and the Fair Youth. These theorists argue that the use of affectionate word choice by the poet towards the young man must be due to a homosexual desire. Some suggest this theory is invalid, saying the poet views the Fair Youth as a son rather than a lover. Majority tend to lean towards

4818-412: The subject of a great amount of speculation: That he was the author's patron, that he was both patron and the "faire youth" who is addressed in the sonnets, that the "faire youth" is based on Mr. W.H. in some sonnets but not others, and a number of other ideas. William Herbert , the Earl of Pembroke , is seen as perhaps the most likely identity of Mr. W.H. and the "young man". He was the dedicatee of

4891-503: The title page, where it is followed by the phrase "Neuer before Imprinted". The title also appears every time the quarto is opened. That the author's name in a possessive form is part of the title sets it apart from all other sonnet collections of the time, except for one— Sir Philip Sidney's posthumous 1591 publication that is titled, Syr. P.S. his Astrophel and Stella , which is considered one of Shakespeare's most important models. Sidney's title may have inspired Shakespeare, particularly if

4964-579: The twentieth century; contemporary poets writing in English sometimes prefer unrhymed couplets, distinguished by layout rather than by matching sounds. Couplets called duilian may be seen on doorways in Chinese communities worldwide. Duilian displayed as part of the Chinese New Year festival, on the first morning of the New Year, are called chunlian (春聯; 春联). These are usually purchased at

5037-482: The vow by falling in love. The lord Longaville expresses his love in a sonnet ("Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye…"), and the lord Berowne does, too—a hexameter sonnet ("If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love?")–a form Sidney uses in six of the sonnets in Astrophel and Stella (Numbers 1, 6, 8, 76, and 102). These sonnets contain comic imperfections, including awkward phrasing, and problems with

5110-473: The young man—urging him to marry and have children in order to immortalize his beauty by passing it to the next generation. Other sonnets express the speaker's love for the young man; brood upon loneliness, death, and the transience of life; seem to criticise the young man for preferring a rival poet; express ambiguous feelings for the speaker's mistress ; and pun on the poet's name. The final two sonnets are allegorical treatments of Greek epigrams referring to

5183-627: The zenith of their prestige in English verse, in the popularity of heroic couplets . The heroic couplet was used by famous poets for ambitious translations of revered Classical texts, for instance, in John Dryden 's translation of the Aeneid and in Alexander Pope 's translation of the Iliad . Though poets still sometimes write in couplets, the form fell somewhat from favour in English in

5256-465: Was on tour from Ipswich to Oxford. In addition, Shakespeare had been away from Stratford and in the same month, May, was being called on to tend to family and business there, and deal with the litigation of a lawsuit in Warwickshire that involved a substantial amount of money. The identity of Mr. W.H., "the only begetter of Shakespeare's Sonnets ", is not known for certain. His identity has been

5329-459: Was the Mr. W.H. referred to in the dedication attached to the manuscript of the Sonnets. The Dark Lady sequence (sonnets 127–152) is the most defiant of the sonnet tradition. The sequence distinguishes itself from the Fair Youth sequence with its overt sexuality ( Sonnet 151 ). The Dark Lady is so called because she has black hair and "dun" skin. The Dark Lady suddenly appears (Sonnet 127), and she and

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