SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS:A KEY TO UNLOCK HIS HEART
Though Shakespeare is better Known as a dramatist , his sonnets numbering 154 in all are no mean contribution to the development of Elizabethan literature. Before Shakespeare's sonnets there had been a tradition of Italian or Petrarchan sonnet. Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, Constable, Daniel, Dayton etc. have all written sonnets in the traditional manner and style. But, Shakespeare introduces some interesting variations in the rhyme-scheme.Shakespearean sonnets or English's differ significantly from Petrarchan sonnets in form, structure and rhyming.]
Some of Shakespeare's are addresses to a fair youth,some to the Dark lady.Shakespeare names the fair youth as W.H. whom critics speculate to be William Herbert who becomes Earl in 1601.The fair youth i smart,handsome and attractive.Describing the fair youth in sonnet 18th,the poet says;
"Shall I compare thee to summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate."
Again ,in sonnet 54th, he says;
"O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which doth give?"
# # #
And so of you beauteous and lovely youth,"
This fair youth is Shakespeare's close friend. But this friendship reaches a critical point or a breaking point whom both of them fall madly in love with the same woman as the sonnet 144th suggests .
Shakespeare introduces this woman as a Dark Lady in his sonnets. This dark lady is identified as Marry Eitton as maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth.
She is presented as possessing certain qualities corresponding to Shakespeare's mistress,a ready wit artistic accomplishments and having dark hair and steals the heart of the poet's friend to herself. This three form is a triangle of one woman and two men. She becomes a cause of poet's alienation from the close friend. As the poet describes in sonnet 33rd:
"But,out! attack! he was but one friend
The region cloud hath marked him from me now."
Thus Shakespeare suffers a double wrong,a double loss- the loss of his beloved and the loss of his friend. However,he prizes friendship more than his love. He takes a saner view that it is natural for a fair youth to fall a victim to the arts of a tempress. So, he condones his friend forgives his friend's fault and makes peace with him. He advises his friend in the sonnets from 27th to 32nd to marry and perpetuate his fairness by producing progeny of his own face and handsomeness. He also promises to make his friend immortal in his verse ( i.e. sonnets ). Clearly, Shakespeare's life and love go through different phases - the phases of love, of separation,of sorrow, depression,of betrayal and ingratitude of union of hope,trust, tolerance,of forgiveness and reconciliation. Sonnets 116th brings out the tone of reunion between them.
Now after analyzing the whole series of sonnets, it becomes obvious that Shakespeare's sonnets present a sequence connected stories of his life and love. They reveal his heart, record his feelings and sentiments,joys and grief,hopes and despair. His sonnets are all love sonnets dealing with the varying moods of his own mind as a lover and a friend giving expressions to his passion of love,of hatred,of jealousy,of despair and now to that of trust,hope,sweet reasonableness,tolerance,forgiveness and reconciliation. All his sonnets are autobiographical touch upon the personal elements; events in his life and love. They unlock his inner heart and feelings and read like a personal dairy. As J.C. Grier son and J.C.Smith observes:
"The thought of transience of youth and beauty only hinted at in the comedies,is the burden of the sonnets. Apart from personal references they are a descant on Time and Death."
Speaking further,they observe: "The remarkable change that comes over Shakespeare's works after 1600 must surely reflect some change in himself. He had left his youth left behind. Perhaps in his weak state the wounds that the "dark lady" had dealt him began to ache again.''
Similarly, Wordsworth says that Shakespeare "expresses his own feelings in his own person." Many other critics like,to name a few, Hallam,Swinburne,Dowden,Furnivall Tyler etc. believe that his sonnets are" genuine autobiographical confessions."
The other opinions on Shakespeare's sonnets regard them to be "the free outcome of a poetic imagination." The critics of these opinions considers sonnets as "mere exercises inverse." But Professor Dowden contradicting them,says:
Similarly,F.S.Boas observes;
"It is inconceivable that such intensity of passion as the reveal - the love,jests,remorse and the striving between the sense and spirit should spring from no solid basis of fact."
There is also a great deal of own-ship with the fair youth.If some consider it to be transcendental others consider it to be physical and quasi- sexual.Most critics agree that during renaissance "passion of friendship was often placed on a more transcendental height than the passion of love."
As Ingram and Theodone Redpath observe;
"It may ,however be in place to state our general impression which is that the relationship was one of profound and times agitated friendship,which involved a certain physical and quasi- sexual fascination emanating from the young friend but did not necessarily include pederasty in a lurid senses"
"Discouraging scholars and students against such notion,they argue;
Elizabethan speech-habits and literary connections certainly encouraged a more fulsome and more frankly emotional style of expression in such relations than would prevail today. . . "
Whatever be the truth-whether the passion of friendship in a transcendental sense or the passion of love in a lurid sense;the fact remarks that Shakespeare's sonnets relate to his personal life,love,events,incidents,fortunes, misfortunes,a sequence of events in his personal life and history.
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