Shakespeare’s Sonnets & Love

1. Shakespeare’s Sonnets& Love Shakespeare??? 18 “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day” 116 “Let me not to the marriage...” from Romeo and Juliet Elizabeth Barret Browning 43 “How do I Love Thee? Let me count the ways!” Poems on Love & Related Themes Image source 1. 2

2. Shakespeare? • Shakespeare Uncovered: Hamlet with David Tennant 8:50; soliloquy 15:45; versions 23:41 • Anonymous (2011; about  Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, an Elizabethancourtier, playwright, poet and patron of the arts) • Shakespeare in Love [later]

3. Outline • Sonnet • 18 “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day” • 116 “Let me not to the marriage of true mind” • from Romeo and Juliet • from Shakespeare in Love • How do I love thee, let me count the way... • Kahoot.it!!!

4. Sonnet --- • A logical argument • “A sonnet is fundamentally a dialectical construct (辨證過程) which allows the poet to examine the nature and ramifications of two usually contrastive ideas, emotions, states of mind, beliefs, actions, events, images, etc., by juxtaposing the two against each other, and possibly resolving or just revealing the tensions created and operative between the two.” (source)

5. Sonnets: Subject Matter 154 altogether

6. Sonnet: Its Metrical Form Meter: iambic pentameter 3 major types: • Petrarchan, • English/Shakespearean • Spenserian a b b a a b b a c d c d c d (& variations) ; e.g. Ozymandias a b a bc d c de f e fg g an octave + a sestet 3 quatrains + a couplet a b a b b c b c c d c d e e

7. Sonnet: Its Logical Form • Petrarchan = an octave + a sestet • A. Octave: Subject, proposition, problem • B. Sestet: Turn, resolution • English/Shakespearean • 3 quatrains’ elaboration of a theme • a couplet (punch line 妙語) • Two parts with a [turn] in the middle, and/or punch line at the end.

8. 18 “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day” Two Kinds of Summer Summer –corn, artichoke, eggplant Giuseppe Arcimboldo (about 1527-1593) source

9. Starting Questions • How is summer described in this poem? (with figurative language, action, sound/sense.) • How is summer different from the “thou” in the poem? • What are the functions of repetition in this poem? • What is the real object of praise in this poem?

10. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shakethe darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexiondimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; (trim: To make neat, or to adjust or balance a ship) * Summer – temporary (with a lease), sun = the eye of heaven, with a face * Decay by chance or messed up (untrimmed) by nature= regular sometimes, chancy and irregular sometimes 18. “Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?” by Shakespeare Images of decay; Repetition & contrast? Spondee / / / /

11. “Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?” by Shakespeare But thy eternal summer shall not fadeNor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal linesto time thou grow'st: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long livesthis, and thisgives life to thee. • ow’st – own, possess • This – the poem

12. “Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?” by Shakespeare • 1st reading: • 只要汝長存與我詩中。 • 汝比夏日更美﹐更溫和﹐更長久﹐ • Poetic device: • Hyperbole: thou grow’st in these eternal lines = eternal summer • repetition: Every fair from fair • See contradictions in the next slide

13. 1) Summer’s images of beauty the darling buds of May Sun= the eye of heaven, sky = gold complexion every fair 2) transience or violence: Rough winds shakes summer's lease . .. too short a date too hot the eye of heaven [Sun’s] gold complexion dimm'd 3. Fair declines from fairness Apparent ContradictionsSummer vs. Eternal Summer 1) Thou art more lovely and more temperate2) Thy eternal summer

14. Actual Similarities and Ambiguities in Stanza 2 But thy eternal summer shall not fadeNor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long livesthis, and thisgives life to thee. • Two “Nor’s” – made possible by the poem; • That fair thou ow’st vs. every fair from fair; “ow’st” = grow’st • You owe your immortality to this poem As always, the closing couplet is the punch line which not only defines the meaning of the whole poem, but also provides richer meanings.

15. This = Sonnet 18, the Grecian Urn? the painting of the last duchess ? Image source

16. Who says you're like one of the dog days? You're nicer. And better. Even in May, the weather can be gray, And a summer sub-let doesn't last forever. 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 short a date Howard Moss (1922-1987)"Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" Dog days = (三伏天 ) Sub-let – 分租 allow some one to rent a room which you are renting from someone else  who is the first tenant?

17. Sometimes the sun's too hot; Sometimes it is not. Who can stay young forever? People break their necks or just drop dead! Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexiondimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd Howard Moss (1922-1987)"Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day"

18. But you? Never! If there‘s just one condensed reader left Who can figure out the abridged alphabet, After you're dead and gone, In this poem you'll live on! But thy eternal summer shall not fadeNor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long livesthis, and thisgives life to thee. Howard Moss's"Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" Condensed: reduced in length, thickened; reader: (讀者﹐讀本) abridged alphabet （節錄字母﹚– cell phone literature? Is immortality ever guaranteed? Even literature can be forgotten or ignored.

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20. Sonnet 116 – What are the opposing forces? Sound effects? And ambiguities?

21. Sonnet 116 : Starting Questions • What is the main idea? Why can’t the marriage of true-minded people be stopped? 2. “Love is not love/Which alters when it alteration finds” – What do the two “love’s” mean? And “alter” and “alternation”? • What kind of love “bends with the remover to remove”? • What patterns can you find in terms of its use of words (repetition) and rhymes, its alteration between the positive and the negative? • What do you think about the punch line? Are there ambiguities?

22. Let me not to the marriage of true minds Language for Romantic Love: Marriage, alter/altar Eternity: Fixed mark = lighthouse; Star Rosy lips and cheeks Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. Oh no! It is an ever fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken. It isthe star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come. (his =?) Love altersnot with his brief hours and weeks, (his =?) But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

23. Notes: “Fixed Mark” Father Time • Mark = sea mark, lighthouse • God of Time (with a Sickle): Saturn (or Chronos), the Roman Deity of Time and an ancient Italian Corn God known as the Sower (image and info source); the sickle is “bending” in two ways (its shape, its impact) • love as a star: 1) love provides direction for those who are searching or lost; 2) its height is known, but not its true value (limitless).

24. Structural Pattern of Negations • 1st quatrain: what love does not do • 2nd quatrain: “o, no!” what love is • 3rd quatrain: alteration between what love is not and does not • Couplet: the final stake of both writing and love • Q: can the changing circumstances be denied?

25. Structural Pattern & Ambiguities (2) 1) “Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments.” = 1) admit = allow; 2) Let me not admit only? 2) What love does not change? 3) Oh no! 4) Love is the star …”Whose worth's unknown” 5) “rosy lips and cheeks” comes within Time’s “bending sickle's compass.” (range, an instrument used for navigation) 6) Love altersnot with his brief hours and weeks, (whose =?) 7) “I never writ, nor no man ever loved.”

26. Two Kinds of Love

27. Ref. A Critic says—Do you Agree? [In Sonnet 116] the chief pause in sense is after the twelfth line. Seventy-five per cent of the words are monosyllables; only three contain more syllables than two; none belong in any degree to the vocabulary of 'poetic' diction. There is nothing recondite, exotic, or metaphysical in the thought. There are three run-on lines, one pair of double-endings. There is nothing to remark about the rhyming except the happy blending of open and closed vowels, and of liquids, nasals, and stops; nothing to say about the harmony except to point out how the fluttering accents in the quatrains give place in the couplet to the emphatic march of the almost unrelieved iambic feet. In short, the poet has employed one hundred and ten of the simplest words in the language and the two simplest rhyme-schemes to produce a poem which has about it no strangeness whatever except the strangeness of perfection. (Brooke, 234)

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29. Romeo & Juliet the Courting Sonnet Act I, Scene V

30. Love at First Sight (I, v, 41-53) Seen across a crowded room: Context – Benvolio (I, i, 226) have brought Romeo to the Masque so that he will see other women, and thus have his mind taken off his obsession Rosalinde – likewise, Capulet has brought Paris there under the same advice (I, ii, 31) The irony is, therefore, that once they set eyes on each other, they see no-one else – establishing their own personal PRIVATE SPACE within the PUBLIC realm of the masque. source

31. Love at First Sight (I, v, 41-53) ROMEO[To a Servingman] What lady is that, which doth enrich the handOf yonder knight? Servant I know not, sir. ROMEO O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!It seems she hangs upon the cheek of nightLike a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear;Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand,And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night. TYBALTThis, by his voice, should be a Montague. source

32. Metaphors? Act I, v, 92 – 106 ROMEO [To JULIET] If I profane with my unworthiest hand aThis holy shrine, the gentle sin is this: bMy lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand aTo smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. b JULIETGood pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, cWhich mannerly devotion shows in this; dFor saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, cAnd palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss. d ROMEO Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too? e JULIET Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer. f ROMEO O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do; eThey pray: grant thou, lest faith turn to despair. f JULIETSaints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake. g ROMEOThen move not, while my prayer's effect I take. g (kiss)Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.

33. Act I, v, 92 – 106 JULIET Then have my lips the sin that they have took. ROMEO Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!Give me my sin again. JULIET You kiss by the book.

34. Images: religious • Romeo -- hands’ and lips’ pilgrimage: • Profane: (verb) to treat something sacred, holy, or special with abuse.  • Shrine= Juliet or her hand:  (noun)  a place where pilgrims visit to pray to and worship a saint. Usually with a statue or relic of a saint. • Pilgrim or Palmer (a person wearing two crossed palm leaves as a sign of pilgrimage to the Holy Land.) • Puns: palm– hand, palm leaves  

35. Conceit: Extended Metaphor for pilgrimage and purgation

36. Courtly Love and Courting Sonnets • Courtly Love – originated in the court, the illicit love between a knight and the queen as his lady (e.g. King Arthur’s legends, Tristan and Iseult) , the love which inspires the knight to go on a noble quest. • the Petrarchan tradition of courtly love poetry (Laura) e.g. common paradoxes about courtlylove such as "sweet torment" and "shivering at midsummer." • Shakespeare: courting sonnets and sonnets on love, poetry & mortality • The Metaphysical Poetry –witty seduction and platonic love. Image source

37. Shakespeare in Love • Shakespeare inspired to write Romeo and Juliet and The Twelfth Night by his lover, Viola de Lesseps. • Two parallel plotlines of the film and the play within the film. • The Love of Poetry, Play and/or between the two of them • The poetic lines can be so touchingly read…

38. Shakespeare in Love: Clips –the Love of Poetry or of a Woman • 1- Shakespeare in his writer’s block • 2-audition • 3. 27:00 Lady in (dance) –balcony scene – Shakespeare writing again   • 4. 00:37: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? • 5. talk on the boat  “My Mistress’s Eyes Are Nothing like a Sun” • 6. 00:49 (after the first love-making) –performance  balcony scene (Act 2 scene 1) • 7. 01:18 [after the revelation of S’s marriage and the death of Marlow] –Romeo’s parting (Act 3, Scene 5) • 8. 01:34 The play -- “Two households …”

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40. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

41. Sonnet 43: pay attention to enjambments* & the turn 我的愛比山高、比海深？ How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday's Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death. 海枯石爛 至死不渝？

42. Sonnet 43 • Thesis: The speaker expresses both through form and content how love is both boundless and limited. • Form: limitlessness + limitations • Italian, but with only 4 rhymes; intertwining rhymes; • Repetition of words; • Emotional, long lines not limited by the form; breaks in the middle of two lines; • Meaning in tension: • Paradox between uncountable love and countable ways; • between boundless love and finality of life. (freely, purely vs. past losses and future death) • between the spiritual and eternal (open or long vowels) and the everyday life (short and stressed syllables).

43. A comfortable childhood, when she preferred reading to social life. Very well-read, mostly self-educated. Writes her first poem at the age of four; At the age of six, she received from her father for "some lines on virtue penned with great care" a ten-shilling note enclosed in a letter addressed to "the Poet-Laureate of Hope End." In 1850, the year when Wordsworth died, she was mentioned frequently as a possible successor of the Poet Laureate. Her life and Sonnet 43 Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1): A Distinguished Poet

44. The plot of Romantic Love The father did not allow them to get married (being against the idea of marriage). (Why? …) Threatened with lung disease, lived in a darkened room with few visitors (after her brother’s death by drowning). Browning in January 1845 wrote a letter which began, "I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett." Married before elopement. (still following the Victorian moral codes) Her elopement with Browning “cured her invalidism.” More famous and accomplished than Browning during her lifetime; they lived on her money; RB becomes productive ‘after’ her death Reasons for the father’s objection: mixture of blood??? E. B. Browning (2) : the Conventional and Unconventional

45. Victorians –saw her as a major poet, good enough to be considered for laureatship; Great inspiration for Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti Later critics – see her as an adjunct to her husband Contemporary feminists readings: “Aurara Leigh”: Aurora, who aspires to be a poet, is courted with a marriage proposal by her cousin Romney. Rejecting his offer she proclaims her own `vocation'. -- a feminist version Sonnets: ideas of writing love poems appeared in her notebooks well before she met RB. E. B. Browning (3) : Critical Reception of EBB as a poet • “While Robert Browning is famous for being a poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning is famous for being a poet with a romantic life story” (Beard 67)

46. Her sonnets • Different from the Renaissance sonnets because she talks mostly about her own love (and doubts—possibly including the sexual aspects), but not her lover.

47. Ref. E. B. Browning (3) : love & desire • Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850) • The physical sources of desire is presented with metaphors: (Kern 91-92) • She hears “footsteps of the soul” and waits with “trembling knees.” • The hand of love is “soft and warm” and brings “souls to touch” • Her heart opens wide to “fold within the wet wings of thy dove” • Her own pulse and her beloved’s “beat double”

48. Ref. E. B. Browning (3) : desire • Exchange of a lock of hair: • R. Browning “Give me . . . so much of you—all precious that you are—as may be given in a lock of your hair—I will live and die with it.” • Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850) • “. . .from my poet’s forehead to my heart . . . [I] lay the gift where nothing hindereth; Here on my heart, as on thy brow, to lack No natural heat till mine grows cold in death.”(Sonnet 19 qtd Kern 345)

49. Conclusion: YOUR Tasks!!! Sonnet– a. A witty argument • Difficult part explained • Complex meanings and sound arrangement analyzed (“turn” and punchline) b. A love poem • Read the poem as a love poem • Relevance? (Youthful, romantic love, mortality and keeping something immortal in one’s work • Differences and Similarities? (putting the pieces back)

50. Love & External Factors