Sonnet 29
1) Resenting his bad luck, the poet envies the successful art of others and rattles off an impressive catalogue of the ills and misfortunes of his life. His depression is derived from his being separated from the young man, even more so because he envisions the youth in the company of others while the poet is “all alone.”
2) The first eight lines establish a conditional argument and show the poet’s frustration with his craft. The last six lines present a splendid image of a morning lark that “sings hymns at heaven’s gate.” This image epitomizes the poet’s delightful memory of his friendship with the youth and compensates for the misfortunes he has lamented.
William Shakespeare : Sonnet
Sonnet: a definition Types of sonnet Textual study:
– Sonnet 18 – Sonnet 29
Sonnet: a definition
A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter.
3) Sonnet 18 is the first poem in the sonnets not to explicitly encourage the young man to have children
4) An important theme of the sonnet (as it is an important theme throughout much of the sequence) is the power of the speaker's poem to defy time and last forever, carrying the beauty of the beloved down to future generations
three quatrains: abab bcbc cdcd ee
Sonnet 18
1) the most famous in the sequence of Shakespeare's sonnets; the most famous lyric poem in English
2) opens the poem with a question addressed to the beloved
Type 3: the Spenserian sonnet
Structure
three quatrains and a couplet, and the couplet introduces new rhyme sounds to the poem
Rhyme scheme
the rhyme scheme interconnects the sound of the
Note:
This type of sonnet is constructed with a change of thought or turn between the octave and the sestet, so that the content and the form are allied.
Type 1: the Petrarchan sonnet
Structure:
an octave (an by an sestet (a six-line stanza)
Rhyme scheme:
abbaabba cdecde
or: abbaabba cdcdcd
Types of Sonnet
There are mainly three types of sonnet:
– The Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet – The English (Shakespearean, Elizabethan) sonnet – The Spenserian sonnet
Type 2: the Shakespearean sonnet
Structure
three quatrains (a four-line stanza) followed by a couplet (a pair of rhymed lines)
Rhyme scheme
abab cdcd efef gg
Note
Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets. The first 126 sonnets are dedicated to a young man; sonnets 127—152 are dedicated to a “dark lady”, and the final two are allegorical.