Part IV The Renaissance

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Part IV The Renaissance

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Introduction to 16th century

• 1. Renaissance (pp91--94)
• The Renaissance Center, Detroit, along the
  Detroit River
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Renaissance Literature in England

• 1.poetry
• 2.drama
• 3. prose

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Sir Philip Sidney

• His life and works

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Edmund Spenser (1552--1599)

• English poet whose long allegorical poem The
  Faerie Queene is one of the greatest in the
  English language. It was written in what came to
  be called the Spenserian stanza.

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• English poet known chiefly for his allegorical
  epic romance The Faerie Queene (1590-1596). His
  other works include the pastoral Shepeardes
  Calendar (1579) and the lyrical marriage poem
  Epithalamion (1595).
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Spenserian stanza

• verse form that consists of eight iambic
  pentameter lines followed by a ninth line of six
  iambic feet (an alexandrine) the rhyme scheme is
  ababbcbcc. The first eight lines produce an
  effect of formal unity, while the hexameter
  completes the thought of the stanza. Invented by
  Edmund Spenser for his poem The Faerie Queene
  (15901609), the Spenserian stanza has origins in
  the Old French ballade (eight-line stanzas,
  rhyming ababbcbc), the Italian ottava rima (eight
  iambic pentameter lines with a rhyme scheme of
  abababcc), and the stanza form used by Chaucer in
  his Monk's Tale (eight lines rhyming ababbcbc).
  A revolutionary innovation in its day, the
  Spenserian stanza fell into general disuse during
  the 17th and 18th centuries. It was revived in
  the 19th century by the Romantic poetse.g.,
  Byron in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Keats in
  The Eve of St. Agnes, and Shelley in Adonais.

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William Shakespeare

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Life and Times of William Shakespeare

• William Shakespeare (15641616) is one of the
  most remarkable playwrights and poets the world
  has ever known.
• Likely the most influential writer in all of
  English literature and certainly the most
  important playwright of the English Renaissance,
  William Shakespeare was born in 1564 in the town
  of Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England.
  The son of a successful middle-class glove-maker,
  Shakespeare attended grammar school, but his
  formal education proceeded no further. In 1582,
  he married an older woman, Anne Hathaway, and had
  three children with her.

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• This is the birthplace of William Shakespeare in
  Stratford-on-Avon.

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The museum in Stratford

• In Stratford there is a museum on William
  Shakespeare where there are plenty of things
  about Shakespeare. Every year visitors from all
  over the world come to visit and worship the
  great writer.

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• Around 1590 he left his family behind and
  traveled to London to work as an actor and
  playwright. Public and critical success quickly
  followed, and Shakespeare eventually became the
  most popular playwright in England and part owner
  of the Globe Theater. His career bridged the
  reigns of Elizabeth I (ruled 1558-1603) and James
  I (ruled 1603-1625) he was a favorite of both
  monarchs. Indeed, James granted Shakespeare's
  company the greatest possible compliment by
  endowing them with the status of king's players.
  Wealthy and renowned, Shakespeare retired to
  Stratford, and died in 1616 at the age of
  fifty-two. At the time of Shakespeare's death,
  such luminaries as Ben Johnson hailed him as the
  apogee of Renaissance theatre.

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• Shakespeare's works were collected and printed in
  various editions in the century following his
  death, and by the early eighteenth century his
  reputation as the greatest poet ever to write in
  English was well established. The unprecedented
  admiration garnered by his works led to a fierce
  curiosity about Shakespeare's life but the
  paucity of surviving biographical information has
  left many details of Shakespeare's personal
  history shrouded in mystery. Some people have
  concluded from this fact that Shakespeare's plays
  in reality were written by someone else--Francis
  Bacon and the Earl of Oxford are the two most
  popular candidates--but the evidence for this
  claim is overwhelmingly circumstantial, and the
  theory is not taken seriously by many scholars.

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• In the absence of definitive proof to the
  contrary, Shakespeare must be viewed as the
  author of the 37 plays and 154 sonnets that bear
  his name. The legacy of this body of work is
  immense. A number of Shakespeare's plays seem to
  have transcended even the category of brilliance,
  becoming so influential as to affect profoundly
  the course of Western literature and culture ever
  after.

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• In his plays he does not hesitate to describe the
  cruelty and anti-natural character of the civil
  wars, but he did not go all the way against the
  feudal rule. In his dramatic creation, esp. in
  his histories or tragedies, he affirms the
  importance of the feudal system in order to
  uphold social order. Shakespeare is against
  religious persecution and racial discrimination,
  against social inequality and the corrupting
  influence of gold and money.
• He has accepted the Renaissance views on
  literature. He holds that literature should be a
  combination of beauty, kindness and truth, and
  should reflect nature and reality. Shakespeares
  major characters are neither merely individual
  ones nor type ones they are individuals
  representing certain types.

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Shakespeare

• William Shakespeare (15641616) is one of the
  most remarkable playwrights and poets the world
  has ever known.
• The surf on the line can show how enormous the
  information we can get about Shakespeare via two
  websites baidu.com and google.com.

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A collection of William Shakespeare's poems,
printed in 1640, included a picture of the
author.
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His works

• With his 38 plays, 154 sonnets and 2 long poems,
  he has established his giant position in world
  literature.
• The first period
• 5 history plays Henry VI , parts I, II, III
  Richard III , Titus Andronicus
• 4 comedies The Comedy of Errors, The Two
  Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew and
  Loves Labors Lost
• The second period
• 2 histories Richard II, King John, Henry IV,
  Parts I and II, and Henry V
• 6 comedies A Midsummer Nights Dream, The
  Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, As
  You Like It, Twelfth Night, and The Merry Wives
  of Windsor
• 2 tragedies Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar

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His Works

• The third period
• Tragedies Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth,
  Antony and Cleopatra, Troilus and Cressida, and
  Coriolanus
• Comedies Alls Well That Ends Well and Measure
  for Measure
• The last period
• His principal romantic tragicomedies Pericles,
  Cymbeline, The Winters Tale and The Tempest
• His final plays Henry VIII and The Two Noble
  Kinsmen
• Poetry two long narrative poems Venus and Adonis
  and The Rape of Lucrece 154 sonnets
• Four famous comedies A Midsummer Nights Dream,
  As You Like it, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth
  Night
• Sonnet is a 14-line lyric poem, usually written
  in rhymed iambic pentameter, with a rhymed
  pattern abab cdcd efef gg

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Hamlet
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Jon Finch (centre) as Macbeth in Roman Polanski's
1971 film version of Shakespeare's Macbeth.
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• Romeo and Juliet

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Othello
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Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon,
Warwickshire,
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The Sonnet

• The Sonnet Form
• A sonnet is a fourteen-line lyric poem,
  traditionally written in iambic pentameter--that
  is, in lines ten syllables long, with accents
  falling on every second syllable, as in "Shall I
  compare thee to a summer's day?" .

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Sonnet 18 (to a young man)

• Shall I compare to a summers day? a
• Thou art more lovely and more temperate b
• Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, a
• And summers lease hath all too short a date b
• Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, c
• And often is his gold complexion dimmed d
• And every fair from fair sometime declines, c
• By chance or natures changing course untrimmed
  d
• But thy eternal summer shall not fade, e
• Nor lose possession of that fair thou owst, f
• Nor shall death brag thou wand rest in his shade,
  e
• When in eternal lines to time thou growst. f
• So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
  g
• So long lives this, and this gives life to
  thee. g

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The sonnets

• Two kinds of sonnets have been most common in
  English poetry, and they take their names from
  the greatest poets to utilize them the
  Petrarchan sonnet and the Shakespearean sonnet.
• The Petrarchan sonnet is divided into two main
  parts, called the octave and the sestet. The
  octave is eight lines long, and typically follows
  a rhyme scheme of ABBAABBA, or ABBACDDC. The
  sestet occupies the remaining six lines of the
  poem, and typically follows a rhyme scheme of
  CDCDCD, or CDECDE. The octave and the sestet are
  usually contrasted in some key way for example,
  the octave may ask a question to which the sestet
  offers an answer.

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The Shakespearean sonnet

• The Shakespearean sonnet, the form of sonnet
  utilized throughout Shakespeare's sequence, is
  divided into four parts. The first three parts
  are each four lines long, and are known as
  quatrains, rhymed ABAB the fourth part is called
  the couplet, and is rhymed CC.
• Sonnet is a 14-line lyric poem, usually written
  in rhymed iambic pentameter, with a rhymed
  pattern abab cdcd efef gg
• The Shakespearean sonnet is often used to develop
  a sequence of metaphors or ideas, one in each
  quatrain, while the couplet offers either a
  summary or a new take on the preceding images or
  ideas.

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• Shakespeare's sonnets are very different from
  Shakespeare's plays, but they do contain dramatic
  elements and an overall sense of story. Each of
  the poems deals with a highly personal theme, and
  each can be taken on its own or in relation to
  the poems around it. The sonnets have the feel of
  autobiographical poems, but we don't know whether
  they deal with real events or not, because no one
  knows enough about Shakespeare's life to say
  whether or not they deal with real events and
  feelings, so we tend to refer to the voice of the
  sonnets as "the speaker"--as though he were a
  dramatic creation like Hamlet or King Lear.

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• There are certainly a number of intriguing
  continuities throughout the poems.
• The first 126 of the sonnets seem to be
  addressed to an unnamed young nobleman, whom the
  speaker loves very much
• The rest of the poems (except for the last two,
  which seem generally unconnected to the rest of
  the sequence) seem to be addressed to a
  mysterious woman, whom the speaker loves, hates,
  and lusts for simultaneously. The two addressees
  of the sonnets are usually referred to as the
  "young man" and the "dark lady" in summaries of
  individual poems, I have also called the young
  man the "beloved" and the dark lady the "lover,"
  especially in cases where their identity can only
  be surmised.

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• 1 In the old age black was not counted fair,
• Or if it were it bore not beautys name.
• But now is black beautys successive heir,
• 4 And beauty slandered with a bastard shame
• For since each hand hath put on natures powr,
  
• Fairing the foul with arts false borrowed
  face,
• 8 Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bowr,
• But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace,
• Therefore my mistress eyes are raven black,
• Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem
• At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,
• 12 Slandring creation with a false esteem.
• yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,
• That every tongue says beauty should look so.

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• Questions
• 1. What is the theme of the sonnet?
• 2. How do you define beauty?
• Rhymed pattern
• Abab cdcd efef gg

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Rhymed Pattern

• In the old age black was not counted fair, a
• Or if it were it bore not beautys name. b
• But now is black beautys successive heir, a
• And beauty slandered with a bastard shame b
• For since each hand hath put on natures powr,
  c
• Fairing the foul with arts false borrowed face,
  d
• Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bowr, c
• But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace, d
• Therefore my mistress eyes are raven black, e
• Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem f
• At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack, e
• Slandring creation with a false esteem. f
• yet so they mourn becoming of their woe, g
• That every tongue says beauty should look
  so. g

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III The detailed study of the poem

• 1. the old age former times
• black brunette
• counted considered.
• fair (1) blonde (2) beautiful
• 2. bore not beautys name was not called
  beautiful.
• 3. isbeautys successive heir i.e. has legally
  acquired beautys name
• successive by order of succession.

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Queen Elizabeth I
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• 4. beauty natural beauty, i.e. blonde.
  Slandered is disgraced. With a bastard shame
  (1) as a bastard (2) as the parent of a bastard
  (ugliness).
• 5. since ever since. Each hand everybody. Put
  on assumed.
• 6. Fairing Making fair, i.e. painting up as a
  blonde. The foul what is ugly. Arts of
  artifice. Arts false borrowed face i.e.
  cosmetics.
• fairing foul false face
• 7. Sweet beauty Natural beauty. Name i.e. good
  name (to be envied). Holy bowr holy place,
  sanctuary (for worship).

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• 8. But On the contrary. Profaned treated with
  disrespect. If not or even.
• 9.,10 eyes, eyes
• eyes are raven black. (disfigure)
• so suited dressed in the same color. They,
  i.e. her eyes. Mourners seem seem to be mourners
• 11. At such who Mourning those who, follows the
  above line mourners. No beauty lack lack no
  beauty, are not without beauty (such as a
  blondes)

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• 12. Slandring Disgracing.
• Creation (1) nature (2) natures creative
  powers. False esteem confused judgement, with
  the false valuation, estimation.
• 13. Yet However. So in such a manner. mourn
  lament, is followed that. Becoming of
  befitting.
• 14. so like that.

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IV Discussion

• The author defines the new standards as being
  beautiful black, black eyes. Why does he keep
  such different criteria?

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Summary

• In this lecture we learn the information about
  sonnet, Shakespeare and his sonnet. With the
  scrutiny of sonnet 127, we can taste the beauty
  of Shakespearean sonnets, understand what the
  great writer thinks about and the ideas on the
  times he lived in.