Sonnets Shakespeare's 154 sonnets, first

appearing in a collection in 1609, may be roughly divided into three groups.

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Sonnets

• Numbers 1 ～ 126 are addressed to a handsome young man, a friend of the poet.

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• Numbers 127 ～ 152 are addressed to a dark woman, whom the speaker loves passionately. The last two sonnets are conventional love poems about Cupid.

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Efforts have been made to ascertain the identity of these characters, but no one has produced solid evidence that the sonnets are related to Shakespeare's private life.

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Sonnets

The term “ sonnet ” derives from the Italian sonetto a “ little sound ” or “ song ” . Except for the curtal sonnet, the ordinary sonnet consists of fourteen lines, usually in iambic pentameters with considerable variations in rhyme scheme.

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Sonnets

• The three basic sonnet forms are:

• (a) the Petrarchan which comprises an octave rhyming abbaabba and a sestet rhyming cdecde or cdcdcd, or in any combination except a rhyming couplet;

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Sonnets

• (b) the Spenserian of three quatrains and a couplet, rhyming abab,

bcbc, cdcd, ee;

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Sonnets

• (c) the Shakespearean, again with three quatrains and a couplet, rhyming abab, cdcd, efef, gg.

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Sonnets

The Italian form is the commonest. The octave develops one thought; there is then a “ turn ” or volta, and the sestet grows out of the octave, varies it and completes it. In the other two forms a different idea is expressed in each quatrain; each grows out of the one preceding it; and the argument, theme and dialectic are concluded, “ tied up ” in the binding end-couplet.

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SonnetsThe following excerpts are Sonnets 18 and

29. In Sonnet 18, the poet writes on the

conventional theme that poetry will bring eternity to the one he loves.

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Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day1? 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 date2. Sometime3 too hot the eye of heaven4 shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed; And every fair5 from fair sometime declines, 　

Notes: 1. a summer's day: It is considered the most pleasant season in England. 2. date: period 3. sometime: sometimes 4. the eye of heaven: the sun 5. fair: beautiful person or beautiful thing. Here it refers to something concrete. The next “ fair ” refers to something abstract, “ beauty ” . 　

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Sonnet 18

summer’s day

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Sonnet 18

By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed6; But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st7, Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade, When in eternal lines8 to time thou grow'st. So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives

life to thee.

6. untrimmed: stripped of gay apparel 7. ow'st: own 8. lines: poetry

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