Shakespeare’s is undoubtedly the greatest of the English Renaissance sonnet sequences, and yet is exceptional in a number of respects. It was published in an unauthorised edition in 1609, a decade after the late Elizabethan vogue for sonnet sequences was past. Whereas most sonneteers follow the tradition begun by the Italian Petrarch, addressed to a virtuous and unobtainable mistress, Shakespeare’s sonnets are written to a handsome and noble young man, or to a wanton and faithless ‘dark lady’.
The present course will eschew any attempt at a ‘biographical’ reading of the sonnets. Rather it will be argued that Shakespeare, like Sir Philip Sidney before him in Astrophel and Stella, is using the sonnet sequence to construct a fictional emotional drama. He is drawing on a classical and Renaissance tradition of writing on male friendship, particularly between older and younger men, which need neither imply nor exclude homoerotic feeling; and he is seeking a greater thematic freedom through writing to a man. Likewise, ‘the dark lady’ sonnets allow a franker and painful exploration of jealousy and lust.
The first class will outline the nature of the traditions of Petrarchanism and the sonnet. Subsequent sessions will be concerned with specific themes: male friendship and male beauty; desire; and perhaps most important, defiance of the destructive power of time. It will also be shown how the sonnets exhibit different degrees of emotional depth and seriousness; how in fact a poet can simply enjoy his own intellectual and verbal brilliance.
Sonnets by other Tudor and Elizabethan poets may be used as terms of comparison; and prospective students are encouraged to sample the work of Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton, and other appropriate authors.
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