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Sonnets

The golden age of Poetry

The golden age of music and sonnets is the Renaissance. The sonnet was born in Italy and was invented by Iacopo da Lentini, reaching its greatest expression with Petrarch, whose Canzoniere became a model for poets of the European Renaissance.

Petrarchan sonnet

A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem with a fixed rhyme motif, and the Italian poem consists of an octave, usually ABBA ABBA rhymes, that generally presents a problem or a situation, and a sestet, CDE CDE or CDC DCD, that contains the solution of the problem or personal reflections. There is usually a turn at the end of the eighth line and the third line is introduced by words like "and", "if", "so", "but" or "again".

Shakespearean sonnet

In the English or Shakespearean sonnet we have three quartines and a couplet, and rhymes with ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The poet can use the quartines to present a theme or three different topics and draw a conclusion in the last couplet.

Wyatt and Howard introduced the Italian sonnet to England, but changed the rhyme scheme to ABBA CDDC EE. CDDC EE and the Rhyme model of the Shakespearean sonnet became ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.

Elizabethan sonneteers showed their ability in the use of conceits, an extended metaphor that characterises a whole stanza or poem. During the last decades of Elizabeth's reign many poets started writing sonnets and most of the sonnet collections were named after a woman; this tradition became popular especially in England because of the veneration of Queen Elizabeth I, who was variously referred to by poets as 'Cynthia' and 'the Faerie Queene'.

Themes and lenguage

The traditional theme of the sonnet is love. The lady is perfect both physically and morally, and the conflict between desire and unhappiness leads the poet to madness. This is expressed through the oximoron, a figure of discourse that combines two contradictory terms.

In fact, the lover suffers and begs for the love of the lady, who is desirable but chaste. Shakespeare introduced other themes such as beauty, decay and art. The popularity of the sonnet declined during the 18th century, but was taken up by romantic poets and later proved suitable for expressing 20th-century themes.

Shall I compare thee

Shakespeare talks about a lady and does not want to compare her to summer, she says that she is sweeter and that summer is too short; moreover, the sun sometimes diminishes the beauty of everything, instead the beauty of the lady is eternal and will be so as long as men are able to breathe and look.

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:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed,

And every fair from fair sometimes declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest,

Nor shall Death bragll thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

My mistress' eyes

The sonnet addresses the "dark lady", of whom the poet loves human qualities and not the "angelic" side like Dante and Boccaccio. The poem begins by comparing nature to the quality of the lady and asks the question "what is beauty?"

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips' red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts' are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head;

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breaths that from my mistress reeks;

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

Ihat music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess' go.

(My mistress when she walks treads on the ground).

And yet by heaven; I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare'.