Sonnets of Shakespeare

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Sonnets of Shakespeare

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1. General information about life and work of Shakespeare

1.1 Short facts about Shakespeare's biography

1.2 Renaissance of poetry

1.3 Shakespeare's work

Chapter 2. Sonnets of Shakespeare

2.1 Sonnet's form

2.2 When were the sonnets created?

2.3 Violation of sonnet sequence

Conclusion

References

Introduction

A careful reading of Shakespeare's sonnets revealed to me not only the world of his literary images. Moreover, the lines of the sonnets revealed the smallest details of the personal and creative life of the poets, writers and playwrights who surrounded him. The fact is that the work of poets and playwrights included in Shakespeare's circle of friends directly influenced the work of the bard. And this obvious fact served to hone the facets of talent in the genius of world drama. It is worth noting that the sonnets, being private correspondence, were written in the literal sense of the word “from the knee”.

The depth of the author's intention of each sonnet captivates and captures the reader. However, the researchers of Shakespeare's work were not able to capture the depth of the poet's and bard's intention, to understand the characteristic features of the language of the sonnets.

This fact fully revealed the most common mistakes that arose among translators of Shakespeare's sonnets into Russian. In whose translations Shakespeare's sonnets have completely lost the depth of the author's thought, the storyline, and the refined ironic manner inherent only to Shakespeare.

When, after reading unsuccessful translations, you begin to fully feel disappointment from the bitterness of losing Shakespeare in the fullness of the original text and the author's ironic handwriting. covering almost all spheres of life. Moreover, among wealthy aristocrats, it was considered a sign of good taste to be a patron of poor but talented poets, writers or playwrights, financially supporting their creative impulses, in search of new literary forms.

In the conditions of feudal class relations, each writer and playwright differed from his colleagues in the creative workshop by his individual handwriting. But, as happens among talented creative individuals, as a result of the natural process of development, rivalry arises. Only competition and rivalry could clearly show who actually was the first in poetry and drama.

Studying sections of the texts of sonnets, it was important for me, as a researcher, to understand the main reasons that served as motivations for William Shakespeare to write sonnets from the subgroup "The Rival Poet" Multiple poetsIt has also been suggested that the Rival Poet is an amalgam of several of Shakespeare's contemporaries instead of a single person., "The Rival Poet" (77-86), dedicated to the rival poet, and of course to the addressee.

I want to note that in the subgroup of sonnets "Poet Rival", poetic lines were woven addressed to the "young man", the addressee of the entire sequence of sonnets "Fair Youth" ("Fair Youth"),

Chapter 1. General information about life and work of Shakespeare.

1.1 Short facts about Shakespeare's biography.

We have only a few reliable facts related to the biography of William Shakespeare. We do not know the exact date of his birth, but metrical church records indicate that he was baptized in the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, on April 26, 1564. His father, John Shakespeare, was a wool merchant, succeeded in the trade and became mayor of Stratford in 1568. His mother, Mary Arden, was the daughter of a successful landowner. History knows little about Shakespeare's school years: it is only known that, according to his contemporary Wen Johnson, he knew a little Latin and even less Greek. Shakespeare did not study at the university. According to two popular legends, the young Shakespeare was first an assistant butcher, and later he had to leave Stratford for allegedly killing a deer in the possession of Sir Thomas Lucy Charlicote. It is known for certain that on November 27, 1582, 18-year-old Shakespeare got married.

His fiancee, Anne Hathaway, judging by the inscription on the tombstone, was eight years older. Church records show the birth of their daughter Susanna and two more children, twins Hamnet and Judith. There is no data on Shakespeare's life in the next 7-8 years, and only in 1592 he was mentioned in a pamphlet by the London playwright Robert Green, who warned his friends about an actor who had the audacity to write plays himself: "This upstart crow, who decorated himself with feathers pulled by us, a man who believes that he is capable of writing in the same sublime white verse as the best of us...". Since 1595, Shakespeare is mentioned as a co-owner of the "Lord Chamberlain's Troupe" (later it became known as the "Royal James I Troupe"). There are no records left of exactly what roles and in which plays Shakespeare played, although it is believed that he played supporting roles, like a ghost, in Hamlet. In 1599 he became a co-owner of the Globe Theater, and in 1608 - a co-owner of the Dominican Theater.

Four or five years later, Shakespeare returned to Stratford and began living in the house he had bought in 1597. After returning to Stratford, Shakespeare no longer writes. Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616 (his birthday). Shakespeare's life was as multifaceted as the works he created. You could even say that he had not one, but several lives. One Shakespeare is the one who was a son, lover, husband, father and friend. But we know the least about this. His personal life has remained a mystery to us. We know more about another Shakespeare - a business man who entered into an independent life with almost no means and had to earn hard work. From this Shakespeare remained bills of sale and mortgages, statements of claim to the court, inventories and other documents related to the acquisition of property and monetary transactions. This Shakespeare was a co-owner of the theater and performed on stage as an actor. He also had the life of a man on the stage, with its professional worries, petty squabbles, the habit of being transformed, being in full view of thousands of eyes, experiencing delight from stage successes. No one knows the truth about Shakespeare, there are only legends, opinions, some documents and his great works.

1.2 Renaissance of poetry

Poetry of the Renaissance Poetic talent was a necessary prerequisite for becoming a playwright in the Renaissance. Since the Middle Ages, plays have always been written in verse. The Renaissance only changed the nature of the poems that dramas were written with. Miracles, mysteries, moralites and interludes were composed in rhymed verses, but there was almost no genuine poetry in them. Christopher Marlowe transformed the dramatic art, raised it to the height of poetry. He rejected rhyme and introduced white verse into the drama, in which the great passions of this extraordinary time resounded like thunder. Marlowe freed drama from its chains - rhyme bound drama. The audience went to the theater not only to watch the action of dramas, but also to listen to beautiful poetry. The authors competed with each other in the beauties of style, using the entire arsenal of means of figurative and rhetorical speech.

By their combined efforts, they created a language of poetic drama, far from everyday speech, because it was necessary to express grandiose impulses, vague forebodings and great ideas, inexpressible in ordinary words. Already in the first plays of Shakespeare we meet him as a poet. Descriptions of the landscape, emotional outpourings, stories about the past, put into the mouths of the actors, are poems and small poems. The characters of the plays speak in blank verse, occasionally rhyming individual lines. When Shakespeare entered the dramatic field, he immediately proved himself a master whose verse was not inferior to the poetry of Marlowe, Green, Peel and his other immediate predecessors a person who held a job or office before the current holder.. It is not for nothing that Green, in his famous review of Shakespeare, which is the first literary evidence of the great playwright, scolding him as an "upstart crow", wrote that this actor, dressing up "in other people's feathers", "thinks that he is also capable of rattling white verse", as well as playwrights who studied poetry in universities. Shakespeare really at first dressed up "in someone else's feathers," and the style of his first dramas shows that he took advantage of the poetic discoveries of his predecessors. Some lines in them resemble Marlowe, then Green, then the Kid so much that later they suspected that the early plays were written not by him, but by one of them, and maybe all of them together.

In fact, Shakespeare simply merged with the flow of the poetic drama of those years. He's not the only one who looks like Marlo, Green, or the Kid. They themselves, in turn, are similar to each other in many ways. Unfortunately, nothing is known about when Shakespeare began writing poetry. However, it is quite obvious that his early dramas were not the first test of a poetic pen. It is hard to believe that he could master verse from the first time as a true master of poetic drama.

Apparently, the three parts of "Henry VI" were preceded by some early poetic experiments that have not come down to us. In biographical legends about Shakespeare, there are more than once mentions that in his youth he wrote poetry. So, in the famous legend about Shakespeare's poaching, there is a curious detail: angry at Sir Thomas Lucy, who allegedly persecuted him for hunting in a foreign land, Shakespeare wrote satirical poems on his abuser, which he hung on poles. Shakespeare's poaching is most likely a fiction, but the part of the truth that is contained in it, undoubtedly, is that the young Shakespeare wrote poetry.

We find ourselves on firmer ground when we turn from such legends to facts that allow us to find out where Shakespeare's interest in poetry began. She was introduced to him by the "grammar" school where Shakespeare studied. Here, while studying Latin, schoolchildren read poems by Ovid, Virgil and other Roman poets. They memorized them by heart, translated them, and it is safe to say that the school opened the world of poetry to the young Shakespeare. Ovid became his favorite. In numerous passages of Shakespeare's poems and plays there are direct and indirect echoes of the work of the ancient Roman poet. In this respect, Shakespeare was not much different from the "university minds". If the volume of the school poetry course was inferior to the university program, then Shakespeare's personal talent and - we will not be mistaken if we say this - his passion for poetry allowed Shakespeare to first catch up and then surpass his more erudite fellow writers. He learned not only the lessons learned from school, but also everything that was rich in Russian poetry from Chaucer to Spencer.

So, in the Renaissance, the English drama did not exist without poetry, but there was poetry without drama. We now call Shakespeare a playwright and a poet, without making a distinction between these two concepts. In his time, it was far from the same thing. The position of the poet and the playwright in public opinion was different. If now Shakespeare's significance is determined primarily by his great achievements in the dramatic art, then in the eyes of his contemporaries, poetic creativity was of paramount importance. Shakespeare himself, as far as we can judge, did not appreciate very much what he wrote for the theater. Deaf hints in sonnets (28 and 29) give reason to think that Shakespeare considered his work for the theater an inferior activity.

The literary theory of the Renaissance recognized as truly poetic only those dramas that were written in accordance with the rules and on the model of Seneca Or Plautus. Since folk drama, staged in public theaters, did not meet these requirements, it was considered as if standing outside of great literature. Literary theory considered only works intended for a select audience consisting of learned connoisseurs to be truly poetic. In that era, poetic creativity bore the stamp of aristocracy. Poetry was considered as free creativity, not connected with material benefits. It is characteristic that the first humanist poets of the English Renaissance - Wyeth, Surrey, Sidney - were aristocrats.

Poetic creativity was for them a high occupation, an exercise of the mind, a means of expressing thoughts and moods in a sophisticated artistic form, and they intended their works only for a narrow circle of connoisseurs of poetry. Poetry required erudition meant that readers were aware of the subtleties of poetry. It was necessary to know the mythology, stable poetic symbols, the interpretation of various topics by other poets, without which neither the idea nor the poetic merits of the work were clear. In other words, creativity intended for a wide range of readers was rejected.

From the Middle Ages, Renaissance poetry inherited the tradition of dedicating poems to dignitaries. It was necessarily some nobleman or lady of the heart, to whom the poet addressed his work. Patronage flourished. Patronizing poets was considered a sign of enlightenment. The evaluation of poetic creations was to a certain extent even determined by the height of the position of the person to whom the poems were dedicated. Sometimes the poets, who formed a circle grouped around some nobleman who patronized them, competed in the struggle for his favor. This can be illustrated by some of Shakespeare's sonnets (for example, sonnets 78-86), where he writes about rival poets:

I Grant Thou Wert Not Married To My Muse

I grant thou wert not married to my Muse,

And therefore mayst without attaint o'erlook

The dedicated words which writers use

Of their fair subject, blessing every book.

Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,

Finding thy worth a limit past my praise,

And therefore art enforced to seek anew

Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.

And do so, love, yet when they have devised

What strained touches rhetoric can lend,

Thou, truly fair, wert truly sympathized

In true plain words by thy true-telling friend;

And their gross painting might be better used

Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abused.

William Shakespeare (sonnet 82)

Although aristocrats often gave poets money for dedications, nevertheless, in principle, it was believed that the fruits of poetic creativity were "not traded." They can be presented as a gift, but they cannot be taken to the book market. However, the spread of printing has also affected poetry. Editions of poems began to appear. The beginning of this was a collection published by the publisher Tottel in 1557. At first, only printers and booksellers benefited from this. Even those poets who published their own poems did not count on income from it. In short, although the book has already become a market commodity, poetic creativity has not yet become one. While theaters paid playwrights for plays. The profit from them was small, but still it was creativity for sale. Antiquity has already made poetry friends with philosophy. The great thinker of antiquity, Aristotle, pointed out that the task of art is not limited to depicting reality, it should give a meaningful reproduction of it, in which the laws governing life will be revealed. In the Renaissance, the philosophical tradition in poetry was preserved, having acquired a new orientation due to the spiritual aspirations characteristic of the Renaissance worldview. In the Middle Ages, poetry, like other types of intellectual activity, fell into subordination to theology. Even love lyrics experienced some influence of medieval scholastic thought, which is especially noticeable, for example, in Dante. The spiritual emancipation that took place during the Renaissance also affected poetry. The struggle of the earthly, sensual and spirituality permeates both philosophy and poetry of the Renaissance. The poetry of the English Renaissance seeks a synthesis of the spiritual and the physical in man. In the greatest of the poets of the English Renaissance - Edmund Spencer - the struggle of the earthly and heavenly, sensual and spiritual ends with the victory of the spiritual principle. The lyrics and narrative poetry of the 1580s-1590s vary in every way the topics related to this problem.

Since the theme of love is connected with the question of human nature, it is natural that everything that constitutes the essence of the life process was included in its consideration. Therefore, the question of earthly and spiritual principles is intertwined with man's attitude to Nature in general, and his life path is determined by the relationship with Time. And finally, the philosophical formulation of all these questions inevitably led to the question of the significance of Death for human existence. That is why in the circle of problems of Renaissance love lyrics we find not only themes of Love, but also themes of Nature, Time and Death. The meaning of poetic works is revealed not so much in the plot as in philosophical and lyrical arguments about Love, Nature, Time and Death.

1.3 Shakespeare's work

In the vast world of Shakespeare's work, his poems and sonnets occupy a separate area. They are like an autonomous province with their own laws and customs, which differ in many ways from those inherent in the drama. Shakespeare wrote plays for the general public, for the common people, for the "crowd", confident that they would not bring him literary fame. If he had been asked how he could prove that he was a poet, he would not have given his plays in confirmation. The right to this high title was given only to poetic works belonging to recognized genres of literature. That is why, publishing the poem "Venus and Adonis" The poem tells the story of Venus, the goddess of Love; of her unrequited love; and of her attempted seduction of Adonis, an extremely handsome young man, who would rather go hunting., Shakespeare in the dedication calls it "the firstborn of his imagination", that is, his first work. In the light of what has been said above, this does not mean that the poem was written before the plays, but only that Shakespeare did not classify them as great literature, dating his introduction to Parnassus with the named poem. Shakespeare evaluates his sonnets as follows:

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;

But you shall shine more bright in these contents

Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time.

When wasteful war shall statues overturn,

And broils root out the work of masonry,

Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn

The living record of your memory.

Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity

Shall you pace forth;

Your praise shall still find room

Even in the eyes of all posterity

That wear this world out to the ending doom.

So, till the judgment that yourself arise,

You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.

William Shakespeare

(sonnet 55)

However, anyone who thinks that Shakespeare was really so self-confident will be mistaken. The sonnet we quoted is nothing more than a variation on the theme of the famous poem by Horace, which is Pushkin's "Monument".

Compositionally, Shakespeare's poetic works obey strict laws of architecture. In them we find the exact calculation of proportions. True, in this respect Shakespeare's poetic constructions resemble not so much the classical rigor of ancient forms as the sophistication of the Baroque, but this rather refers to large poems, whereas sonnets are a miracle of strict and precise architectonics. As in a piece of music, Shakespeare varies the same motif in the poem. It is enough just to look at how he modifies the speeches of Venus, begging Adonis for love, or the mournful lamentations of Lucretia in every way, and we will understand that the poet's skill is to extract an infinite variety of variations from one melody. Shakespeare's verse is melodic in the literal sense of the word. No wonder he earned the nickname "sweet" from his contemporaries. Shakespeare's verse is melodious, pauses and accents have a great semantic meaning, they are also important in the musical score of the verse.

The sound of Shakespeare's poetry is unique. The sounds determine the lyrical flavor: in one case, anger, passion, in the other - calm poise. Of course, other components of the verse, in particular the rhythm, play a role in this. Shakespeare's rhythmic mastery is evident in the way he managed to give a variety of sound to the rigid and constant stanza of the sonnet.

Harmony is what unites the artistic methods of Shakespeare's poetry. The impression of harmony comes from all of Shakespeare's poetic creations.

The expressive means of Shakespeare's poetry are extraordinarily rich. They have a lot inherited from the entire European and English poetic tradition, but a lot is also completely new. Shakespeare also showed his originality in the wealth of new images he introduced into poetry, and in the novelty of the interpretation of traditional plots. He began by using the usual poetic symbols for Renaissance poetry. Already by his time, a significant number of familiar poetic associations had accumulated. Youth is likened to spring or dawn, beauty is the charms of flowers, the withering of a person is autumn, decrepitude is winter. Signs of beauty were also stable - marble whiteness, lily tenderness, etc.
We find the same circle of poetic symbols in the sonnets describing the beauty of the noble youth to whom they are dedicated. For example, sonnet 18:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

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 date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed:

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade

When in eternal lines 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.

William Shakespeare

The inexorable passage of time and the inevitability of old age are likened to the seasons (sonnet 12).

Lily's euphuistic style had a significant influence on Shakespeare's poetry. One of its characteristic features is the poetic play of antitheses. True, it was not Lily who invented it, she was already in Petrarch's poetry, but it is most likely that this technique came to Shakespeare through the euphuism of Lily. A typical example of this is sonnet 43:

When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,

For all the day they view things unrespected;

But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,

And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.

Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,

How would thy shadow's form form happy show

To the clear day with thy much clearer light,

When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!

How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made

By looking on thee in the living day,

When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade

Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!

All days are nights to see till I see thee,

And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.

William Shakespeare

Having paid tribute to tradition, Shakespeare went his own way. Next to the usual poetic associations, we find in him images and comparisons that are unexpected and at first glance unethical. These are images taken from everyday life, comparisons and comparisons with facts, which in themselves are not at all poetic. In sonnet 23, the poet, justifying that he is silent and does not find words to express feelings, likens himself to an actor who has forgotten the role (this image reminds us of Shakespeare's profession). In the next sonnet (24), he likens his eyes to an artist-engraver who imprints the image of a beloved being on a tablet of the heart. In sonnet 30, the basis of the image is a judicial procedure: the poet likens his memory to a court session, to which memories are called as witnesses, and this procedure recreates the appearance of an absent friend. In sonnet 47, the heart and the eyes conclude a contract, which consists in the fact that when the heart longs to see a beloved friend, the eyes give him this joy, and when the eyes lack the sight of a friend, the heart gives the eyes memories of how beautiful he is.

In sonnet 48, love is compared to a treasure: the poet did not bother to lock it in a casket, and a thief stole it. In sonnet 52, another version of the same comparison: the poet, like a rich man, keeps the treasures of his feelings in a casket and can open it at any time to enjoy the spectacle of the jewels stored there. Perhaps the most unexpected in prosaic way is the image on which sonnet 143 is built: when one of the domestic birds runs away from the hostess, she lowers the child she was holding in her arms to the ground and begins to catch the fugitive, the child cries and asks for her hands. Here the poet likens himself to an abandoned and crying child, and compares his beloved, who is chasing the hope of another, greater happiness running away from her, with a peasant woman catching poultry. Shakespeare expands the range of themes of poetry, introduces images from different areas of life into it and thereby enriches the traditional forms of verse. Over time, Shakespeare's poetry increasingly loses its conventionality and artificiality, approaching life, and we see this especially clearly in the metaphorical richness of his sonnets. In the poems, detailed comparisons of this type still prevailed:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see'st the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed whereon it must expire,

Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

William Shakespeare

(Sonnet 73)

Many of the sonnets are either one extended metaphor or a chain of metaphors, as in the poem just quoted, where the poet likens himself first to autumn, then to twilight and finally to a dying fire.

Chapter 2. Sonnets of Shakespeare

2.1 Sonnet's form

The sonnet form was invented a long time ago. It was probably created by Provencal poets, but the sonnet received its classical development in Renaissance Italy. The sonnet form was invented when it was believed that the poet's art required mastery of the most complex and difficult techniques of versification. As we know - "The stern Dante did not despise the sonnet, Petrarch poured out the heat of love in it...". And it was Petrarch who raised the art of writing sonnets to the greatest height. There are always 14 lines in a sonnet. The classical Italian form of the sonnet is constructed as follows: two quatrains and two triplets with a certain rhyme system: abba avav ccd ede or avav avav ccd eed.

The sonnet does not allow repetition of words (except conjunctions and prepositional words or articles). The first quatrain should contain an exposition, that is, a presentation of the topic, and the very first line should immediately introduce the reader to the subject of the poem. In the second quatrain, a further development of the theme is given, sometimes according to the principle of opposition. The three verses give the solution of the topic, the result, the conclusion from the author's thoughts. The difficulty of form, the rigor of compositional principles captivated the poets of the Renaissance. In England, the sonnet was introduced by Wyeth. However, it remained a secondary form for a long time, until the example of Philip Sidney attracted other poets, and then, at the end of the XVI century, the sonnet briefly took a leading place in the lyrics. At first, English poets followed the Italian sonnet construction scheme, then developed their own system of its composition. The English form of the sonnet consists of three quatrains and a final couplet.

Accepted rhyme order: avav cdcd efef gg. This system is simpler compared to the Italian Petrarch scheme. Since Shakespeare used it, it was called Shakespeare's. As in the classic Italian sonnet, each poem is dedicated to one theme. As a rule, Shakespeare follows the usual pattern: the first quatrain contains an exposition of the topic, the second - its development, the third - leads to the denouement, and the final couplet in an aphoristic concise form expresses the result. Sometimes this is a conclusion from what has been said above, sometimes, on the contrary, an unexpected contrast to everything that was said before, and, finally, in some cases, just a conclusion that is inferior in expressiveness to the preceding quatrains - the thought seems to calm down, calms down.

In some cases Shakespeare violates this principle of composition. Some sonnets represent a consistent development of one theme from beginning to end through a multitude of images and comparisons illustrating the main idea. Considering Shakespeare's "Sonnets", it is necessary first of all to accurately imagine the requirements of composition, to which the poet had to subordinate his imagination. And to appreciate this art, one must learn to see how he was able to subordinate this rigid scheme to his plan, idea. Reading into the Sonnets, one can see how Shakespeare increasingly mastered this complex form. In some, especially the initial sonnets, the poet's stiffness is still felt - the form seems to pull him along. Gradually Shakespeare reaches that freedom of possession of form when neither he nor we feel its confining framework, and then it turns out that in 14 lines you can fit the whole world, a huge dramatic content, an abyss of feelings, thoughts and passions. So far, the external side of the sonnet has been considered. Let us now turn to what constitutes its inner form. As already mentioned, only one theme develops in each sonnet.

The poet's originality is by no means in inventing it. By Shakespeare's time, sonnet poetry, and lyrics in general, were so rich that all possible themes they received expression in the poems of poets. Already Petrarch, the founder of Renaissance poetry and the father of all new European lyrics, in his sonnets exhausted the entire stock of topics devoted to the spiritual life of a person, especially the feeling of love. Every poet of that era who wrote lyrical poems, and in particular sonnets, knew that he could not impress with the novelty of the plot. There was only one way out: to find new expressive means, new images and comparisons, so that the well-known sounds in a new way. This is what the Renaissance poets, including Shakespeare, sought to achieve. Petrarch also defined the basis of the sonnet's internal form, its figurative system. It was based on a comparison. For each theme, the poet found his own image or a whole chain of images. The more unexpected the likeness was, the more it was appreciated. The comparison was often brought to an extreme degree of hyperbolism. But poets were not afraid of exaggerations. The multitude of images that arise in each of Shakespeare's sonnets are soldered together by an inner unity.

How is it achieved?

The fusion of an idea and an image. The Italians called it the word "concetti", the English "conceit", and the literal Russian correspondence to this term "concept". This concept is artistic. Its essence lies in the fact that thought, feeling, mood, all elusive and difficult to express mental movements are expressed through the concrete and visual, and then it turns out that there are an infinite number of analogies between the spiritual and material world. Thus, the poet expresses the idea of the need to prolong his life in posterity in sonnet 1, saying: "We are waiting for the harvest from the best vines So that beauty lives without fading. Let the petals of ripe roses wither, a young rose keeps their memory." The content of the sonnet is a feeling or mood caused by some fact. The fact itself is only vaguely mentioned, given a hint, and sometimes the sonnet does not have an immediate reason at all - the poem serves as an expression of the mood possessed by the poet. The main thing is in the expression of emotions, in finding words and images that they will not only convey the mental state of the lyrical hero, but also infect the reader with this mood. In sonnets, as in poems, particular cases serve as an occasion for broad generalizations concerning the whole of life. Sometimes it seems that we are talking about some purely personal, fleeting mood, but the poet certainly connects it with something more that is outside of it. In Shakespeare's dramas, and especially in his tragedies, we encounter the same combination of the particular and the general.

The poets of the Renaissance, and especially Shakespeare, were very acutely aware of the contradictions of life. They saw them both in the outside world and in the human soul. The Sonnets reveal to us the dialectic of emotional experiences associated with the feeling of love, which turns out to be not only the source of the highest joys, but also the cause of the gravest torments.

2.2 When were the sonnets created?

When were the Sonnets created?

Most researchers believe that the Sonnets were written by Shakespeare between 1592 and 1598. It is these years that are the period of the highest flowering of sonnet poetry in English Renaissance literature. The impetus for this was given by the publication in 1591 of a series of sonnets by Philip Sidney "Astrophil and Stella" (they were written earlier, around 1580). Since that time, the sonnet has become the most fashionable form of lyrics. The poets competed with each other in the processing of this difficult poetic form and created a large number of sonnet cycles. In 1592 Samuel Denel published a series of sonnets "Delia"; in 1593 appeared: "Tears of Imagination" by Thomas Watson, "Parthenophile and Parthenon" by Barnaby Barnes, "Phyllida" by Thomas Lodge, "Lysia" by Giles Fletcher; in 1594 - "Diana" by Henry Constable, "Sonnets to Celia" by William Percy, "The Mirror of the Idea" by Michael Dryten and the anonymous cycle "Zephyria"; in 1595 - the famous "Amoretti" by the greatest poet of the English Renaissance Edmund Spencer, "Cynthia" by Richard Barnfield, "One Hundred Spiritual Sonnets" by Barnaby Barnes, "Alcilia" by an unknown author; in 1596 - "Fidessa" by Bartholomew Griffin and "Chloride" by William Smith; in 1597 - "One Hundred Christian Passions" by Henry Poke, "Laura" by Robert Toft, "The Tree of Love Tricks" by Nicholas Breton; in 1598 - "Alba" by Robert Toft. After 1598, the flow of sonnet poetry immediately stops, and in the next few years it does not a single book of sonnets was published until the publisher T. Thorpe published Shakespeare's Sonnets in 1609.

Shakespeare was always sensitive to the needs and interests of his time. His dramaturgy testifies to this with sufficient clarity. When writing sonnets became fashionable, Shakespeare also turned to this poetic form.

The fact that the Sonnets were created between 1592-1598 is also due to their stylistic proximity to other works written by Shakespeare during these years. A number of themes and motifs of the Sonnets echo some stanzas of his poems "Venus and Adonis" (1593) and "Lucretia" (1594). The similarity between the poetic expressions, images and comparisons found in the Sonnets and in the dramatic works written by Shakespeare during these years is revealed. The parallels between the "Sonnets" and individual passages of such plays as "The Two Veronese", "The Fruitless Efforts of Love", "Romeo and Juliet", which were created by Shakespeare in 1594-1595, are especially clear.

But although the bulk of the sonnets were written between 1592 and 1598, it is possible that some of the poems included in the collection were created earlier, and others later than these years.

It was the custom of Renaissance poets to write sonnets in such a way that they formed into cycles, internally connected with a certain theme and lyrical plot. Shakespeare's Sonnets are close to this. Basically, the "Sonnets" form a lyrical story about the poet's passionate friendship with a beautiful young man and no less passionate love for an ugly, but captivating woman.

"For joy and sorrow, by the will of Fate,

Two friends, two loves possess me:

A light-haired, light-eyed man

And a woman in whose eyes the darkness of the night".

Next, we learn that the poet's friend and lover got closer and both, thus, cheated on him. But this did not kill his attachment to a friend, nor his passion for his beloved.

2.3 Violation of sonnet sequence

The unity of the Sonnet cycle is not so much plot as ideological and emotional. It is determined by the personality of their lyrical hero - the one in whose name all these poems are written.

In the drama unfolding before us in The Sonnets, there are three characters: A Friend, a dark lady and a Poet. We see the first two through the eyes of a poet. His attitude towards them is undergoing changes, and from the descriptions of the poet's feelings towards these two persons, a large and complex image of the main lyrical hero of the Sonnets arises before us.

It is impossible to directly identify the lyrical hero of the Sonnets with Shakespeare himself. Of course, the image of the lyrical hero included a lot of personal. But this is not a self-portrait, but an artistic image of a person, as vitally truthful and real as the images of the heroes of Shakespeare's dramas.

Since the order in which the "Sonnets" have come down to us is somewhat confused, their content is most clearly revealed if the poems are grouped according to thematic features. In general, they fall into two large groups: the first 126 sonnets are dedicated to a friend, sonnets 127-154 are dedicated to a beloved.

There are much more sonnets dedicated to a friend than poems about a beloved. This is what distinguishes Shakespeare's cycle from all other sonnet cycles, not only in English, but also in all European poetry of the Renaissance.

Sonnets to a friend and sonnets to a lover are like two separate cycles, between which there is a connection. But in general, "Sonnets" do not look like a pre-conceived and systematically implemented cycle of lyrical poems.

That is why there was an opinion about the violation of the sequence of sonnets in the first edition of 1609? Even a cursory hasty and therefore not thorough or detailed. acquaintance leads to the conclusion that the logic of the lyrical plot is not sustained everywhere. So, for example, that a friend cheated on a poet with his beloved, we learn from sonnets 40, 41, 42, and long before we learn that the poet had a lover - sonnets tell us about her, starting with 127.

This is not the only case of a violation of the sequence in the arrangement of sonnets. It is possible that Shakespeare himself wrote some sonnets outside the cycle, not caring what place they will occupy in the book of his "Sonnets". In this regard, attempts have arisen to correct the inaccuracies of the original printed text by defining a more logically consistent order of sonnets. Several systems of their arrangement have been proposed. Some of them deserve attention. Sometimes, when rearranging the places of sonnets, the previously unnoticed logic of the connection between individual poems is revealed. Sometimes the convergence of different sonnets turns out to be arbitrary, imposing more on the author than he intended. Shakespeare's "Sonnets" belong to the outstanding examples of lyrical poetry.

In the lyrics, as a rule, they are used to seeing the expression of the poet's personal feelings and experiences. In the first half of the XIX century, during the reign of Romanticism, when poetic creativity was seen mainly as a means of self-expression of the author, the view of "Sonnets" as a lyrical confession of Shakespeare was established. The romantic poet Wordsworth, reviving the sonnet form that disappeared in the poetry of the XVIII century, wrote: "With this key Shakespeare opened his heart." This view has become widespread. Many Shakespeare scholars have decided that the Sonnets are autobiographical in the most precise sense. They began to see a poetic document in which Shakespeare told the facts of his personal life and personal experiences. They began to search out who the persons described in the sonnets were - Shakespeare's friend and lover? As for the friend, according to many researchers, his name is encrypted with initials in the dedication, which opens the first edition of the Sonnets. The dedication reads: "To the only one to whom the following sonnets owe their appearance, Mr. W.H., every happiness and eternal life promised to him by our immortal poet is wished by the well-wisher who ventured to publish them, T.T"

The second person mentioned in the Sonnets is the poet's beloved. She is not named by name. At that time, the authors of sonnets gave the ladies they sang sublime poetic names. Sydney's is Stella, Drayton has an idea and so on. Shakespeare didn't even bother to give his beloved a conditional poetic name. From the "Sonnets" we only learn that she is dark-skinned, black-haired and does not differ in fidelity in love. She was assigned the name "The Dark Lady of the Sonnets" (the Dark Lady of the Sonnets).

It is not difficult to imagine how much work was spent by inquisitive researchers to establish the identity of a dark-skinned lady. In the end, Elizabeth Vernon and especially Mary Fitton, as well as the cheerful innkeeper Mrs. Davenant from Oxford, won the largest number of supporters. The artist always enriches nature, bringing into it a lot of things that are not in it. The artist invests in what he depicts his life experience, his feelings, views, moods, which are not necessarily and have no direct relation to this particular model.

Therefore, we can guarantee that both the friend and the beloved sung by Shakespeare were different than they appear in the sonnets. We see them through Shakespeare's eyes, and the poet sees, feels differently, deeper, more subtle than ordinary people. In the lyrics, the poet's own view, his vision and feeling are especially important. Therefore, most of all "Sonnets" tell us not so much about those persons who caused the emotions of the author, as about himself, and, therefore, it is a mistake to understand literally everything said by the poet, linking it directly with his biography.

Creativity raises the poet above himself, as he is in everyday life. Separate sonnets, unrelated to either the theme of friendship or the theme of love. These are just lyrical reflections of the poet on various life issues. These sonnets seem deeper and more mature than those dedicated to the praise of a young friend. They contain thoughts that echo the tragedies written by Shakespeare in the early years of the XVII century. Sonnet 66 is particularly interesting in this regard, which is close in thought to Hamlet's famous monologue "To be or not to be..."

There is an inner duality in Shakespeare's sonnets. The ideal and the real coexist in Shakespeare's sonnets in a complex combination, as in his dramaturgy. Shakespeare appears here either as a poet who pays tribute to the sublime and illusory romance of aristocratic poetry, or as a the poet is a realist who invests deeply vital content in the traditional form of the sonnet, which sometimes requires images far from gallantry. Although there is a lot of reality in Shakespeare's Sonnets, it cannot be said that here he appears exclusively as a realist poet. The struggle of the real with the ideal here was not crowned with the complete triumph of the real.

Italian humanists, developing a new philosophy, took the ancient Greek philosopher Plato as their teacher. From his teaching they extracted the concept of love as the highest feeling available to man. Reverence for the beauty and greatness of man is the most important feature of the humanistic worldview of the Renaissance, in contrast to medieval philosophy, which taught that a person is a vessel of all kinds of abominations, from which he is freed only when his soul leaves the mortal body shell.

Humanists saw in love not so much a form of relationships between persons of different sexes, as a truly human form of people's relations to each other in general. They considered friendship between men to be an equally high manifestation of humanity. Such a manifestation of love was considered higher, because friendship shows the purity of feelings. Friendship is based on a purely spiritual feeling. Shakespeare's Sonnets are an inspired hymn to friendship. If we talk about how humanism manifested itself in these poems, then it consists precisely in an infinitely high understanding of friendship. However, the beauty of a friend always worries the poet, who is sophisticated in search of images to describe it. Shakespeare was by no means alone in this understanding of friendship. A letter from the great Renaissance humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam has been preserved, who described the appearance and character of Thomas More to Ulrich von Hutten. Erasmus was a dry man, but he also wrote about Thomas More with sincere admiration. Not only the moral qualities of the author of Utopia, but also his appearance aroused the admiration of Erasmus. The French humanist Michel Montaigne had an admiring friendship for Etienne de la Boecie and wrote about him with the enthusiasm of a lover.

The glorification of a friend, therefore, represents Shakespeare's transfer into poetry of motifs that have already been encountered in humanistic literature. Poems dedicated to a friend have several themes. The first 19 sonnets in every way talk about the same thing: a friend must marry in order for his beauty to come to life in posterity.

Through the whole group of sonnets there is an opposition of the impermanence of Beauty and the inexorability of Time. Time embodies the law of nature, according to which everything that is born blooms, and then is doomed to wither and death. Here we find an optimistic view of the life process. Time can destroy one creature, but life will continue. The poet appeals to a friend to conquer Time, leaving behind a son who will inherit his beauty. There is another means of dealing with Time. Art gives it. It also provides a person with immortality. The poet sees his task in leaving to posterity in verse the image of the human perfection that his beautiful friend showed.

The platonic nature of friendship looms especially in the group of sonnets that are dedicated to separation (24, 44-47, 50, 51). In this group of sonnets, the feeling manifests itself with such force that even in the absence of a friend, it constantly remains a living reality for the poet.

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,

The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;

But then begins a journey in my head,

To work my mind, when body's work's expired:

For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,

Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,

And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,

Looking on darkness which the blind do see:

Save that my soul's imaginary sight

Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,

Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,

Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.

Lo! Thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,

For thee and for myself no quiet find.

William Shakespeare

(Sonnet 27)

If at first a friend was depicted as the embodiment of all perfections, then, starting from sonnet 33 to 96, his bright appearance is clouded. The ardor of friendship is replaced by the bitterness of disappointment, a temporary cooling comes. But the feeling of love still wins in the end. The poet forgives a friend even for taking his beloved away from him. It is harder for him to lose his friendship than her love:

Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all:

What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?

No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call--

All mine was thine before thou hadst this more.

Then if for my love thou my love receivest,

I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest;

But yet be blamed if thou this self deceivest

By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.

I do forgive thy robb'ry, gentle thief,

Although thou steal thee all my poverty;

And yet love knows it is a greater grief

To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury.

Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,

Kill me with spites, yet we must not be foes.

William Shakespeare

(Sonnet 40).

This motif brings to mind the episode of the finale of "The Two Veronese", where Valentin showed his willingness to give up his beloved to Proteus. It seems strange and unjustified in the play, but reading the Sonnets, which depict a similar situation, one can understand this mysterious episode of the Two Veronese.

The final group of sonnets, from the 127th to the 152nd, is dedicated to "a woman in whose eyes the darkness of the night". If a friend is depicted as an ideal being, then the poet's girlfriend is shown as completely earthly:

"Her eyes don't look like stars,

You can't call her mouth coral,

Her shoulders are not snow-white,

And a strand of black wire curls..."

(Sonnet 130).

This sonnet is full of attacks against the idealization of women in Renaissance lyrics. Shakespeare contrasts the stamped signs of beauty with the real female image. From other sonnets we learn that the beloved is "full of whims" (131), that she torments him and her friend with "a whim of infidelity" (133). The poet asks himself:

“How is the driveway to my heart

Could the manor seem happy?”

...