William Shakespeare

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William Shakespeare

• His Famous Sonnets

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Who is William Shakespeare?
The Globe Theater
www.oppidanlibrary.com/shakespeare.htm
www.unplowedground.com/.../travels/travels.html
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Who is William Shakespeare?

• Born in 1564 to John and Mary Arden Shakespeare
• 1582 Married to Anne
• 1583 Birth of Daughter Susanna
• 1585 Birth of twins Judith and Hamnet
• 1587-1592 Established in London as
  actor/playwright first work Comedy of Errors

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Who is William Shakespeare?

• 1593 Begins writing sonnets (until 1597-ish)
• 1594-1596 Some more famous plays Romeo and
  Juliet and Midsummer Nights Dream
• 1597-1608 Best known plays including the rest
  of the tragedies
• 1599 The Globe Theatre built
• 1609 Publication of the Sonnets
• April 23, 1616 Shakespeare dies

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A closer look...
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Question of the Annes

• Hathwey or Whately??

• Not many critics support this hypothesis, but
  those that do use it to portray Shakespeare as a
  young man torn between the love he felt for Anne
  Whateley and the obligation he felt toward Anne
  Hathwey and the child she was carrying, which was
  surely his.

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His Works

• Poetry
• The Sonnets
• The Rape of Lucrece
• Plays
• Tragedies Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth
• Comedies Much Ado About Nothing
• Histories Richard III, Henry V

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What is a Sonnet?

• 14 lines
• Iambic pentameter
• 5 feet
• 2 syllables each
• one unaccented, one accented
• 3 quatrains and a couplet
• abab cdcd efef gg
• First introduced into English Language by Sir
  Thomas Wyatt in 1500s

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Sonnet 18(most famous)

• Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?Thou
  art more lovely and more temperateRough winds
  do shake the darling buds of May,And summer's
  lease hath all too short a dateSometime too hot
  the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold
  complexion dimm'dAnd every fair from fair
  sometime declines,By chance or nature's changing
  course untrimm'dBut thy eternal summer shall
  not fadeNor lose possession of that fair thou
  owestNor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his
  shade,When in eternal lines to time thou
  growestSo long as men can breathe or eyes can
  see,So long lives this and this gives life to
  thee.

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Some Themes

• The sonnets are stories about a handsome boy, or
  rival poet, and the mysterious and aloof "dark"
  lady they both love
• Sonnets 1-126
• Mostly addressed to or concern the other man
• Sonnets 127-152
• About The Dark Lady (hair, facial features,
  character)
• Sonnets 153 154
• Adaptations of famous classical Greek poems

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The Dark Lady

• Who is the dark lady?
• No one knows!

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Sonnet 126

• O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy powerDost hold
  Time's fickle glass, his sickle, hourWho hast
  by waning grown, and therein show'stThy lovers
  withering as thy sweet self grow'stIf Nature,
  sovereign mistress over wrack,As thou goest
  onwards, still will pluck thee back,She keeps
  thee to this purpose, that her skillMay time
  disgrace and wretched minutes kill.Yet fear her,
  O thou minion of her pleasure!She may detain,
  but not still keep, her treasureHer audit,
  though delay'd, answer'd must be,And her quietus
  is to render thee.

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Sonnet 130

• My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sunCoral
  is far more red than her lips' redIf snow be
  white, why then her breasts are dunIf hairs be
  wires, black wires grow on her head.I have seen
  roses damask'd, red and white,But no such roses
  see I in her cheeksAnd in some perfumes is
  there more delightThan in the breath that from
  my mistress reeks.I love to hear her speak, yet
  well I knowThat music hath a far more pleasing
  soundI grant I never saw a goddess goMy
  mistress, when she walks, treads on the
  groundAnd yet, by heaven, I think my love as
  rareAs any she belied with false compare.

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Sonnet 154

• The little Love-god lying once asleep Laid by
  his side his heart-inflaming brand,Whilst many
  nymphs that vow'd chaste life to keepCame
  tripping by but in her maiden handThe fairest
  votary took up that fireWhich many legions of
  true hearts had warm'dAnd so the general of hot
  desireWas sleeping by a virgin hand
  disarm'd.This brand she quenched in a cool well
  by,Which from Love's fire took heat
  perpetual,Growing a bath and healthful
  remedyFor men diseased but I, my mistress'
  thrall,Came there for cure, and this by that I
  prove,Love's fire heats water, water cools not
  love.

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Now...

• Write your own love sonnet!
• Remember the formula
• 14 lines
• Iambic pentameter
• abab cdcd efefe gg