Shakespeare’s Sonnets / 1

Revising Form

What We Know

  • A sonnet is a 14-line poem.
  • It rhymes in a specific way or pattern.
  • Shakespeare’s sonnets follow the way of the English Sonnet: abab cdcd efef gg
  • The final rhyming couplet is used to either summarise the previous 12 lines or present a surprise ending.
  • The rhythm used is that of the iambic pentameter. An iamb is a metrical foot consisting of one stressed and one unstressed syllable – with the unstressed firs eg da-Dum, da-Dum, da-Dum.
  • Shakespeare uses five of these metrical feet per line, which makes it a pentameter.

Sonnet Terminology Reminder

  • Octave (the first 8 lines)
  • Sestet (the last 6 lines)
  • Quatrain (groups of 4 lines with a rhyme pattern)
  • The Volta (the change in topic, tone, mood or style between the octave and the sestet)
  • Rhyming Couplet (the last two lines – if they rhyme)

General Terminology Reminder

  • Similes – when a thing/person/feeling is described as being ‘like’ or ‘as’ something else eg: My love is like a red, red rose
  • Metaphor – when a thing/person/feeling is said to be another thing. For example: my love is a red rose.
  • Extended metaphor – when the initial idea of the metaphor is continued through a paragraph/section.
  • Alliteration – when more than one word in a line begins with the same letter. This is a sound effect. Think of what the poet wants you to hear and how it fits into what is being said.
  • Assonance – when vowel sounds are repeated within a sentence – again it’s a sound effect and you need to think when you can hear and what the effect is – as well as how it helps you understand the subject.
  • Juxtaposition – when two conflicting ideas are placed together
  • Hyperbole – the use of excessive language/exaggeration
  • Ambiguity – when and idea has more than one interpretation and it is not clear which one is meant.
  • Caesura – a pause in the middle of a line caused by a comma, a full stop or another piece of punctuation
  • Conceit – An elaborate or unusual comparison – especially the use of unlikely metaphors, similes, hyperbole and contradiction.

Sonnet 1

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’st flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

Look for images to do with nature; ideas of time and references to beauty.

Sonnet 2

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a totter'd weed of small worth held:
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

Sonnet 12

When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls, all silvered o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves,
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

Sonnet 13

O! that you were your self; but, love, you are
No longer yours, than you your self here live:
Against this coming end you should prepare,
And your sweet semblance to some other give:
So should that beauty which you hold in lease
Find no determination; then you were
Yourself again, after yourself's decease,
When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.
Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,
Which husbandry in honour might uphold,
Against the stormy gusts of winter's day
And barren rage of death's eternal cold?
O! none but unthrifts. Dear my love, you know,
You had a father: let your son say so.

Tracking Similarities

Sonnet 1 / Sonnet 2 / Sonnet 3 / Sonnet 4
Subject/ theme
Nature images
Beauty images
Time images
Form/Structure