Dr.

Kromhout

Sonnet Studies

2010-2011

ON EARLY ENGLISH SONNETS

The first English sonnets were composed by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542), and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (c. 1517-1547); and the first appearance of any in book form was in the rare publication briefly known as Tottle's Miscellany, whose full title is "Songs and Sonettes written by the ryght honourable lorde Henry Howard late earle of Surrey, and other." These accomplished young noblemen had resided in Italy, and, themselves delighting in Italian poetic literature--especially Petrarch's work--hastened, on their return to their own country, to acclimatize the new poetic vehicle which had become so famous in the hands of two of Italy's greatest writers. Their efforts, with a new and difficult medium and a language which was still only approaching that state in which Spenser and Marlowe and Shakespeare found it, were only very partially successful, and, as we now know, their sonnets owed most of what was excellent in them to Italian sources. The remarkable thing about them is that they all end with rhymed-couplets, an arrangement distinctly opposed to any with which they were acquainted in another language. On the other hand, it must be noted (this point should be remembered a little later when we come to discuss Mr. Caine's theory) that Wyatt's are otherwise mostly on the Italian model. Surrey, again, evidently found his task over-difficult of satisfactory performance, and so constantly experimented with a fourteen-line sonnet-mould--like a musician who, arriving in his own land, finds his countrymen's ears not easily attuned to the instrument he brings with him from abroad, and so tries again and again to find some way of making his novel mandolin or lute-sounds attractive to ears accustomed to the harsher strains of fife or windpipe. Thus we find him composing on the two-rhyme-throughout system; linking the three elegiac quatrains and a couplet; and otherwise feeling his way--evidently coming ultimately to the conclusion that the three quatrains and the couplet constituted the form best suited to the English language. This may concisely be set forth in the following formula:-A--B--A--B C--D--C--D E--F--E--F GG ....

Dr. Kromhout

Sonnet Studies

2010-2011

What is styled the Shakespearian sonnet is so called only out of deference to the great poet who made such noble use of it: in the same way as Petrarch is accredited with the structural form bearing his name. As "the sweete laureate of Italie" had predecessors in Guittone d'Arezzo and Amalricchi, so Shakespeare found that the English sonnet--as it should be called--having been inefficiently handled by Surrey, discarded by Spenser, taken up and beautified by Sir Philip Sidney (who seemed unable to definitely decide as to what form to adopt), was at last made thoroughly ready for his use by Daniel and Drayton. To show how the so-called Shakespearian sonnet was led up to and how it actually existed in its maturity prior to the splendid poems of the young player-poet, a sonnet by each of these admirable writers may be quoted. But previous thereto it may again be made clear that the English or Shakespearian sonnet is distinctly different from the normal Italian type. Unlike the latter, it is not divided into two systems--though a pause corresponding to that enforced by the separation of octave and sestet is very frequently observed. Instead of having octave and sestet, the Shakespearian sonnet is made up of three elegiac quatrains clinched by a rhymed couplet with a new sound; and, generally, it presents the motive as it were in a transparent sphere, instead of as a cameo with two sides. As regards swiftness of motion, its gain upon the Spenserian, to which it is so closely allied, is great.

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) "How oft have I, my dear and cruel foe"
How oft have I, my dear and cruel foe, With those your eyes for to get peace and truce Proffered you mine heart! But you do not use Among so high things to cast your mind so low. If any other look for it, as ye trow, Their vain weak hope doth greatly them abuse. And thus I disdain that that ye refuse: It was once mine, it can no more be so. If I then it chase, nor it in you can find In this exile no manner of comfort, Nor live alone, nor, where he is called, resort, He may wander from his natural kind. So shall it be great hurt unto us twain And yours the loss and mine the deadly pain.

Dr. Kromhout

Sonnet Studies

2010-2011

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)

Sir Philip Sidney (National Portrait Gallery, London)

Astrophel and Stella sonnet sequence published 1591 "Who will in fairest book of Nature know"
Who will in fairest book of Nature know How virtue may best lodg'd in beauty be, Let him but learn of Love to read in thee, Stella, those fair lines which true goodness show. There shall he find all vices' overthrow, Not by rude force, but sweetest sovranty Of reason, from whose light those night-birds fly, That inward sun in thine eyes shineth so. And, not content to be Perfection's heir Thyself, dost strive all minds that way to move Who mark in thee what is in thee most fair. So while thy beauty draws the heart to love, As fast that virtue bends that love to good. But ah, Desire still cries: "Give me some food!"

sovereignty

"My true-love hath my heart and I have his"

My true-love hath my heart and I have his, By just exchange one for the other given: I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss; There never was a bargain better driven. His heart in me keeps me and him in one; My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides: He loves my heart, for once it was his own; I cherish his because in me it bides. His heart his wound received from my sight; My heart was wounded with his wounded heart; For as from me on him his hurt did light, So still, methought, in me his hurt did smart: Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss, My true love hath my heart and I have his.

Dr. Kromhout

Sonnet Studies

2010-2011

Michael Drayton (1563-1631) "Some misbelieving and profane in love"

Some misbelieving and profane in love, When I do speak of miracles by thee, May say that thou art flattered by me Who only write my skill in verse to prove; See miracles, ye unbelieving, see A dumb-born muse made to express the mind, A cripple hand to write, yet lame by kind, One by thy name, the other touching thee; Blind were mine eyes till they were seen of thine, And mine ears deaf by thy fame healed be, My vices cured by virtues sprung from thee, My hopes revived, which long in grave had lyne; All unclean thoughts foul spirits cast out in me Only by virtue that proceeds from thee. SONNET HISTORY CONTINUED In the 17th century, the sonnet was adapted to other purposes, with John Donne and George Herbert writing religious sonnets, and John Milton using the sonnet as a general meditative poem. Both the Shakespearean and Petrarchan rhyme schemes were popular throughout this period, as well as many variants. The fashion for the sonnet went out with the Restoration, and hardly any sonnets were written between 1670 and Wordsworth's time. However, sonnets came back strongly with the French Revolution. Wordsworth himself wrote several sonnets, of which the best-known are "The world is too much with us" and the sonnet to Milton; his sonnets were essentially modeled on Milton's. Keats and Shelley also wrote major sonnets; Keats's sonnets used formal and rhetorical patterns inspired partly by Shakespeare, and Shelley innovated radically, creating his own rhyme scheme for the sonnet "Ozymandias." Sonnets were written throughout the 19th century, but, apart from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese and the sonnets of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, there were few very successful traditional sonnets. Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote several major sonnets, often in sprung rhythm, of which the greatest is "The Windhover," and also several sonnet variants such as the 10-1/2 line curtal sonnet "Pied Beauty" and the 24-line caudate sonnet "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire." By the end of the 19th century, the sonnet had been adapted into a general-purpose form of great flexibility.

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Dr. Kromhout

Sonnet Studies

2010-2011

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) The World Is Too Much With Us (1907)

The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers, For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be A pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathd horn.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (184489). Poems. 1918. Gods Grandeur

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Follow/respond to 5 Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears mans smudge and shares mans smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
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