For Wednesday (Last Day of the Sonnets): "My Name is Will," Sonnets Day 6

For Wednesday: “My Name is Will” (The ‘Dark Lady’ Sonnets): Nos. 127, 129, 130, 135, 136, 138 (and 138a), 144

Answer TWO of the following…

1. In general, what is the poet’s relationship with the “dark lady,” his mistress?  Does he talk about love differently with a woman than with a man?  Is this love sexual—or also idealistic/platonic?  How does she inspire him?  How might these poems be different in subject or tone than the previous ones? 

2. Discuss the differences between Sonnets 138 and 138a: what makes them slightly different poems?  What words/images/tones change?  Which poem do you prefer and why?

3. Sonnet 130, like 18 and 116, lays claim to being one of the most famous poems in the world, to say nothing of The Sonnets.  How might, in some ways, this poem be a response to Sonnet 18 and a way of speaking of love more honestly and less idealistically?  Do you find it a more or less flattering love poem than 18 (or similar poems)? 

4. Sonnet 144 (and a few others) suggest the presence of the young man in the background.  If so, what has happened to the love triangle encountered earlier in the sequence?  How does the poet balance his feelings for each lover, and is this poem at all misogynistic (as some critics have claimed)?

For Monday: The Sonnets, Part 5, "By Evil Still Made Better"

For Monday: The Sonnets: “By Evil Still Made Better”

Sonnets 112, 113, 115, 116, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123, 126

Answer TWO of the following…

1. These are the last sonnets written directly to the ‘young man’; what kind of ‘epilogue’ do these poems offer?  How is he bidding farewell—and on what terms?  Has the idol fallen for the poet?  Are there new betrayals?  Or simply a sense of resignation and/or regret? 

2. Sonnet 126 is the only sonnet in the series without a couplet.  It literally ends with brackets.  Why do you think this is?  What might the meaning—whether visual or metaphorical—be by this anomaly?  Or could it be an act of censorship on Shakespeare’s part—or the printer’s? 

3. Sonnet 116 is one of the most famous sonnets in the series: though considered a great love poem, is love/romance the prime sentiment?  Are there other ways to read this poem?  Explain what other moods/tones you might discern through individual lines.

4. How do any of these poems fit in the ‘story’ you wrote for your last response?  Do they complement or contradict it?  How might you weave them into the fabric of your Sonnet narrative? 

For Friday: Intermission--Staging the Sonnets

So far, we’ve read the better part of 110 Sonnets—that’s a lot of Shakespeare!  So before we finish Sonnets 111-154, I want you to reflect on what we’ve read and how Shakespeare intended us to read/interpret it.  What are The Sonnets anyway?  Clearly, they’re not a collection of random poems because they respond to one another, develop similar themes, and seem to advance an invisible storyline that lies just beyond our view.  However, if they do have a plot, where is it—who does it involve—and what is at stake for the ‘players’? 

For your response, I want you to write a brief sketch of potential ‘story’ for The Sonnets.  Pretend this is an outline for a potential play or film: who are the main characters, how does their relationship develop, what obstacles do they encounter, and when (and how) does the breakup occur?  Cite several Sonnets as reference points to your story (you can either quote a line or two or simply reference them) and think about how individual Sonnets connect and advance the story.  Above all, try to conceptualize The Sonnets as a drama that could be acted out and has all the elements of a good tragedy—or comedy(?).

NOTE: You don’t have to take into account every single Sonnet: your story can conveniently avoid those that don’t fit neatly into your scheme, or you can just focus on a small section, say Sonnets 1-19.   However, try to cast your net as widely as possible and consider what Shakespeare might have wanted us to see/experience with The Sonnets.  Remember, this is still just an informal response, so just a page or two will do.  

For Wednesday: "A Motley to the View" (Sonnets part 4)

For Wednesday: “A Motley to the View”

Sonnets 86, 87, 91, 94, 96, 100, 103, 106, 107, 110

Answer TWO of the following...

1. As we get to the 100’s in the sonnet sequence, we see certain themes repeated, some with almost frantic urgency, while others appear only fleetingly here and there.  Choose one of the sonnets from this group and compare it to an earlier one with which it shares a consistent theme or idea.  What makes this poem different?  Is it an improvement over the previous one?  An expansion?  A clarification?  A contradiction?

2. In many of these sonnets, the poet seems to take on a fatherly tone, hectoring the young man about his behavior in society and/or toward the poet himself.  Where do we see this in a specific sonnet?  In this sonnet, what is he trying to ‘teach’ the young man, and what might this say about the lover’s fault or transgression? 

3. Choose one of the sonnets in this group and imagine that it is a soliloquy in one of Shakespeare’s plays.  Forgetting about the characters in the Sonnets, who might speak these lines?  What might the dramatic situation be?  Is this a noble Henry—a drunken Falstaff—a plotting Iago—a raging Othello?   Or someone else entirely?  Use specific lines to support this characterization. 

4. Examine a poem where Shakespeare uses poetic devices to telling effect, such as antanaclasis (homonymic pun), polyptonon (repetition of words from the same root), paradoxes (cold fire, timid rage, etc.), or simply strange syntax (sentence structure—“and worse essays prov’d thee my best of love,” etc.).  How does he employ these devices to affect the very meaning of the poem?  If he had written these more straightforwardly (which he certainly could have done), what would we have lost?  How is the meaning in the technique itself? 

Shakespeare's "The Hollow Crown": Watch Now!

Last night, PBS played the first installment of their new Shakespeare Histories series, starting with Richard II.  If you missed it, you can watch the entire show on their website (it's about 2.5 hours long).  Though we're not reading any of this plays in this class, you might be interested in watching Richard II, which shares many of the same themes as The Sonnets, as do the subsequent history plays.  Click on the link below to watch--but don't forget to read The Sonnets (assignment below).

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365083796/

For Monday: The Sonnets, Part 3, "My Love Was My Decay" & Sonnet Recitation Assignment

For Monday: The Sonnets, Part 3: “My Love Was My Decay”:
61, 62, 65, 68, 71, 72, 73, 76, 78, 80

For Monday’s class, I only have one ‘question’ for you to answer: I want you to choose one of the poems above and analyze it in a close reading response.  This means that you will examine the poem line by line, exploring how the poem uses metaphors, images, puns, suggestions, and even sounds to make its points.  Read carefully and be sure to analyze throughout—explain why you see what you do, and help us ‘see’ where you found the clues to decipher (or at least make sense of) the poem.  The key here is to quote words or lines and then discuss them, rather than simply summarizing what the entire poem ‘means.’  Writing a close reading is an act of discovery: you’ll learn a lot more as you do it than you could ever know before you started.  As you analyze the poem, look for some of the common themes of the Sonnets: increasing, immortality, acting, reflecting, social barriers, etc. 

* * * The Sonnet Recitation Assignment!  Due by Friday, October 11^th  * * *

At some point in the next 3 weeks, I want you to choose one of Shakespeare’s Sonnets to memorize and recite to me in my office.  You may choose any Sonnet, even one we didn’t read or discuss in class.  Once you’re ready, you can either schedule a time to recite it or just come to my office hours: MWF 9-10, 1-3, or TR 1-3.  I will follow along in the book, and as long as you have 95% accuracy, you’ll get full points for the memorization.

ALSO—I want you to turn in a typed 1-2 page close reading of the poem, examining how you read the poem and why you see it this way.  And yes, you can do the same poem from your close reading assignment (above). 

This assignment is worth 10% of your grade and must be concluded before or by Friday, October 11^th.  Please do not dread this assignment or worry about embarrassing yourself.  I just want to see you enjoy the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse and have something in your memory that can potentially last a lifetime. 

For Friday: "The Master Mistress of My Passion" (The Sonnets, Part 2)

For Friday:
The Sonnets, Nos. 20, 22, 23, 29, 30, 33, 36, 40, 41, 42, 46, 55

NOTE: I’m skipping around a bit since there is literally so much going on in these Sonnets.  Feel free to read the entire range of 20-60, but these are the ones I want to focus on in class, since they hit many of the high points  As before, read them all but focus on a few to re-read and closely examine.

Answer TWO of the following...

1. Where in these new sonnets do we get a sense of who the ‘players’ are? (we can’t assume it’s Shakespeare and Henry Wroithsley—or even another candidate, William Herbert).  What might be their social classes?  Ages?  Feelings toward one another?  Complications?  Attachments with other characters not directly seen?  Quote a line or two to support your readings. 

2. In this group we see an increasing—though subtle—use of theatrical metaphors.  How does Shakespeare employ metaphors and ideas from the stage to illustrate some aspect of love, relationships, or growing old?  Do any of these remind you of other ideas/works of Shakespeare? 

3. Around Sonnet 33 something has changed in the relationship between the poet and the ‘young man’: are there any clues to reveal what happened?  Did someone betray the other?  Was something discovered?  Was something said?  Consider specifically the metaphors Shakespeare uses in Sonnet 33—the rising sun, the mountains, the “ugly rack” and the “region cloud” (though you don’t have to focus solely on this poem). 

4. Sonnets 40-42 reveal a new character in the Sonnet sequence: who is this person, and what is his/her relationship to the lovers?  How does the poet use this new character to explore the drama of a Spring/Autumn relationship and the perils of falling in love and risking heartbreak?