Intro To Sonnets

Shall I compare
thee to a
summer’s day?
 Study six sonnets in total
 The first two sonnets we study will be for a
practice assessment
 Study four sonnets for controlled assessment
task
 Choice of two tasks
 Task requires you to compare two sonnets
 Three hours controlled assessment to write
your essay: roughly 1000 words/ 4 sides
1. PRACTICE: Compare the ways in which
Shakespeare strikingly presents the passage
of time and its effect on his relationship with
his beloved in these two sonnets.
2. Compare how Shakespeare reflects on the
passage of time and its effect in these two
sonnets.
3. Compare the ways in which Shakespeare
strikingly presents different attitudes to love
in these two sonnets.
 Born 1564 and died 1616
 English poet and
playwright born in
Stratford
 Works include 38
plays,154 sonnets, two
narrative poems and
several other poems
 Widely regarded as
world’s greatest
dramatist
 From your own
knowledge of
Shakespeare, why do
you think this might
be?
 Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets in total
 The sonnets are a series of poems written in a
particular form
 Shakespeare created his own form of sonnet
consisting of 14 lines, written in iambic
pentameter
 The sonnets were the last of his work to be
published
 Scholars suggest he wrote them for a private
readership only
 The poet Wordsworth believed that through his
sonnets, he ‘unlocked his heart’
 Dramatic elements
 An overall sense of story
 Highly personal themes
 Can be read individually or as part of a group
 Feel of autobiographical poems but
impossible to know this for sure
 Address themes and ideas such as love, lust,
hate, beauty and the passing of time; all
distinctly human emotions
 The first 126 seemed to be
addressed to an un-named
nobleman whom the speaker loves
very much
 The rest are mostly addressed to a
mysterious woman whom the
speaker loves, hates and lusts for
simultaneously!
 The two addresses are often
referred to as ‘young man’ and the
‘dark lady’
 You can read the poems as a
sequenced dialogue between the
speaker and these two characters
 Originated in Italy and revived during the
Elizabethan period in England
 14 line lyric poem
 Written in iambic pentameter- ten syllable
line with accents falling on second syllable
 Traditionally associated with love and
romance
 Most influential and important verse forms in
English literature
 Became popular during the
Italian renaissance when an
Italian poet called Petrarch
published a sequence of love
sonnets addressed to an
idealised woman called Laura
 It spread through Europe
where poets wishing to write
about love and romance
popularised the form
 Shakespeare adapted the
traditional Petrarchan sonnet
to create his own version
 Divided 14 lines into four
parts.
 The first three parts are
four lines long and
known as quatrains,
rhymed ABAB/ alternate
rhyme
 The last part is a rhyming
couplet/ AA
 Contain a mixture of
enjambment and end-
stopping
 Let’s have a look at
one Shakespeare’s
most famous
sonnets, Sonnet 18,
which you may
recognise
Iambic pentameter Rhyme scheme
/ . / . / . / . / .
Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day? A
Quatrain Thou art more lovely and more temperate: B
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, A
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date: B
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, C
And oft' is his gold complexion dimm'd; D
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
C
By chance or nature's changing course
untrimm'd: D
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade E
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; F
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade, E
When in eternal lines to time thou growest: F
Couplet So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, G
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. G
 Each group has a typically Shakespearian
theme and a first line to start them off.
 You must try to write your own
Shakespearian sonnet, sticking to the pattern
as closely as possible

Intro To Sonnets

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Shall I compare

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