Session 2 (5/5): Shakespeare’s sonnets

What is a sonnet?

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Let’s see this in Shakespeare’s most famous sonnet (18): Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

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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 dimm’d;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;

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.

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To what does the “eternal summer” refer? Why won’t it fade? What stylistic features can you identify? What is the theme of this poem?

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Let’s now review the elements of poetry:

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PORTFOLIO ACTIVITY 2:

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Sonnet 129

• Try arguing that this sonnet is skillful in the strategy it employs and that is more musical than sonnet 18.
• Analyse this poem in form and meaning. What is the theme? Who is the speaker? What figures of speech can you identify (simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, imagery)? What sound devices are present (alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia)? What are the rhythm and meter patterns? How can you describe the tone and mood of the poem?