Contents introduction I. William shakespeare-england’s national poet

II. LITERAL STYLES USED IN SHAKESPEARE PLAYS
2.1 The art of choosing charakters and their names

An artist usually presents a given object or idea in one relationship to other objects and ideas; if he opens his reader’s consciousness to more than one frame of reference, he focuses on the object in one of its relationships and subordinates all other relationships to it. The essential action of the artist in creating the experience of an audience is the one that in grammar is made by indicators of relationship like “although,” “but,” “after,” “because,” “however.” In literature such indicators of relationship tell the reader that he is not in the borderless world outside art where he himself has always to work upon what he perceives, to arrange it around a focal point chosen and maintained by himself.

Syntactic organization tells the reader that he is dealing with what we are likely to label “truth,” experience sorted, classed, and rated, rather than with “what is true,” the still to be sorted data of “real” experience.⁵

When an artist focuses his audience’s mind and distorts what is true into a recognizable, graspable shape to fit that mind, he not only does what his audience asks but what cannot long satisfy audience or artist just because the desired distortion is a distortion. Art must distort; if it is to justify its existence, it must be other than the reality whose difficulty necessitates artistic mediation. It must seem as little a distortion as possible, because its audience wants comprehension of incomprehensible reality itself. We do not want so much to live in a world organized on human principles as to live in the world so organized. Art must seem to reveal a humanly ordered reality rather than replace a random one.

There are as many ways of trying for the contradictory effects of art as there are artists. All of them aim at replacing the complexities of reality with controlled complexities that will make the experience of the orderly work of art sufficiently similar to the experience of random nature, so that the comfort of artistic coherence will not be immediately dismissed as irrelevant to the intellectual discomfort of the human condition.

Of all literary artists, Shakespeare has been most admired. The reason may be that he comes closest to success in giving us the sense both that we know what cannot be known and that what we know is the unknowable thing we want to know and not something else. I have tried to demonstrate that in the sonnets Shakespeare copes with the problem of the conflicting obligations of a work of art by multiplying the number of ordering principles, systems of organization, and frames of reference in the individual sonnets.

Shakespeare’s multiplication of ordering systems is typically Shakespearean in being unusual not in itself but in its degree. The principle of multiple orders is a defining principle of verse in general. Although “verse” and “prose” are not really precise terms, verse is ordinarily distinguishable from prose in that it presents its materials organized in at least two self-assertive systems at once: at least one of meaning and at least one of sound.

The sonnets are almost all constructed from three quatrians which are four-line stanzas, and a final couplet composed in iambic pentameter.This also the meter used extensively in Shakespeare’s plays.The rhyme scheme is also the meter abab cdcd efef gg.Sonnets using this scheme are known as Shakespearean sonnets,often the beginning of the third quatrain marks the volta(“turn”) or the line in which the mood of the poem shifts,and the poet expresses a revelation or epiphany.There are a few exceptions:sonnet 99,126 and 145.Number 99 has fifteen lines,number 126 consists of six couplets and two blank lines marked with italic bracets;145 is an iambic tetrameters,not pentameters.Thereis one other variation on the standard structure,found for example in sonnet 29.

The normal rhyme scheme is changed by repeating the “b” of quatrain one in quatrain three, where the “f” should be.When analysed as characters,the subject of the sonnets are usually referred to as the Fair Youth, The Rival Poet and the Dark Lady.The speaker expresses admiration for the Fair Youth’s beauty and and has an affair with the Dark Lady.It is not known whether the poems and their characters are fiction or autobiographical,notably A.L.Rowse have attempted to identify the characters with historical individuals.Fair youth is the unnamed young man to whom sonnets 1-126 are addressed.Some commentators,nothing the romantic and loving language used in this sequence of sonnets,have suggested a sexual relationship between them;others have read the relationship as platonic love.

The earliest poems in the sequence recommended the benefits of marriage and children.With the famous sonnet 18 (“shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”)the tone changes dramatically towards romantic intimacy.Sonnet 20 explicity laments that the young man is not woman.Most of the subsquent sonnets describe the ups and downs of the relationship,culminating with an affair between the poet and the Dark Lady.The relationship seems to end when The Fair Youth succumbs to the Lady’s charms.There have been many attempts to identify the young man.Shakespeare’s one-time patron,Henry Wriothesley,3^rd Earl of Southampton is commonly suggested,although Shakespeare’s later patron,William Herbert,3^rd Earl of Pembroke,has recently become popular.Both claims begin with the dedication of the sonnets to “Mr,W.H.,”The only beggeter of these ensuing sonnets“ ;the initials could apply to either earl.However,while Shakespeare’s language often seems to imply that the subject is of higher social status than himself,the apparent references to the poet’s inferiority may simply be part of the rhetoric of romantic submission.

An alternative theory,most famously espoused by Oscar Wilde’s short story “The Portrait of Mr.W.H.” Wild’s story acknowledges that there is no evidence for such a person’s existance.Samuel Butler believed that the friend was a seaman.Joseph Pequigney argued in his book Such is My Love that the Fair Youth was an unknown commoner.The Dark Lady sequence distinguishes itself from the Fair Youth sequence by being overtly sexual in its passion.Among these,sonnet 151 has been characterised as “bawdy” and is used to illustrate the difference between the spiritual love for the fair youth and the sexual love for the Dark Lady.The distinction is commonly made in the introduction to modern editions of the sonnets.The Dark Lady is so called because the poems make it clear that she has back black hair and dun coloured skin.As with the Fair Youth,there have been many attempts to identify her with a real historicalindividual.Mary Fitton,Emilia Lanier and others have been suggested.The Rival Poet’s identity remains a mystery;among the varied candidates are Christopher Marlowe,George Chapman,or,an amalgamation of several contemporaries.⁶However,there is no hard evidence that the character had a rel life counterpart.The speaker sees the Rival as competition for fame,coin and patronage.The sonnets most commonly identified as the Rival Poet group exist within the Fair Youth sequence in sonnets 78-86.Shakespeare’s sonnets can be seen as a prototype,or even the beginning of new kind of modern love poetry.The sonnets have great cross-cultural importance and influence.The sonnet of Petrarch and Shakespeare represent,in the history of this major poetic developments in terms of technical consolidation-by renovating the inherited material -and artistic expressiveness-by covering a wide range of subject in an equally wide range of tones.Both writers cemented the sonnet’s enduring appeal by demonsrating its flexibility and lyrical potency through the exceptionalquality of their poems.

The sonnet is a type of poem finding its origins in Italy around 1235 AD.While the early sonneteers experimented with patterns,Francesco Petrarch was one of the first to significantly solidify sonnet structure.The Italian or Petrarchan sonnet consists of two parts;an octave and a sestet.The octave can be broken down into two quatrains; likewise, the sestet is made up of two tercets .The octave presents an idea to be contrasted by the ending sestet.The particulr quatrains and the tercets are divided by change in rhyme.Petrarchtypically used an ABBA ABBA pattern for the octave,followed by either CDE CDE or CDC DCD rhymes in the sestet.( the symmetries (ABBA CDC) of these rhyme schemes have also been rendered in musical structure in the late Xxth century composition Scrivo in Vento inspired by Petrarch’s sonnets work together to emphasize the idea of the poem:the quatrain presents the theme and the second expands on it.

The repeated rhyme scheme within the octave strenghtens the idea.The sestet,with either two or three different rhymes,uses its first tercet to reflect on the theme and the last to conclude.William Shakespeare utilized the sonnet in love poetry of his own,employing the sonnet structure conventionalized by English poets Wyatt and Surrey.This structure,known as the English or Shakespearean sonnet,consists of three quatrains and a concluding couplet.The rhyme scheme is a simple ABAB,CDCD,EFEF,GG format.The effect is” like going for a short drive with a very fast driver: the first lines even the first quatrain,are in low gear;then thesecond and the third accelerate sharply,and ideas and metaphors flash past;and then there is a sudden throttling-back,and one glides to a stop in the couplet” Like Petrarch,Shakespeare used structure to explofe the multiple facets of a theme in a short piece.The Italian or Petrarchan sonnet is written in iambic pentameter.The sonnet consists of fourteen lines,separated into an eight line stanza and six line stanza.

The first stanza (with eight lines) is called an octave and follows the followingrhyme pattern:

a b b a a b b a

The second stanza (consisting of six lines )is called sestet and follows the following rhyme patterns:

c d с d с d с d e c d e c d e c e d c d c e d c.

c d d c d c.

The final two lines cannot end in a couplet (given the couplet was never used in Italy or by Petrarch.)The change in both rhyme pattern and subject matter takes place by creation of two distinct stanzas(the octave and the sestet).The change in rhyme and subject happen at the volta,the ninth line of poem (the first line of the second stanza).The Shakespearean sonnet or English sonnet is very different from the Petrarchan sonnet.While the Shakespearean sonnet consists of fourteen lines (like Petrarchan sonnet),the lines are divided into stanzas very differently.The sonnet is composed using three quatrains (three stanzas consisting of four lines each) and a concluding couplet (a two line stanza).The rhyme scheme of this sonnet is alternating,throughout the quatrains,and in a rhyming couplet.Therefore, the rhyme scheme of the Shakespearean sonnet is as follows:

1. 
   a b a b
   
2. 
   с d c d
   
3. 
   e f e f
   
4. 
   g g
   

Both the Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnet have place where subject changes,but in the Shakespearean sonnet it is not called volta,instead,it is called the turn.The turn takes place at the same point (line 9) as the Petrarchan sonnet.Sometimes though,the turn may not happen until the couplet.Petrarch and Shakespeare are two poets known for thir work on the subject of love.

While they each approach the subject of their poems through sonnet forms,there are fundamental differences in their style and form,as well as in the way they undergo the discussion of their subjects.Adittionally,it is apparent that in “sonnet 130” ,Shakespeare actually saterizes Petrarch style’s style and musings as his narrator describes his mistress,whose “eyes are nothing like the sun”.Shakespeare appears to be making light of the metaphor and exaggerated comparison found in Petrarch’s work by offering an English sonnet describing the very ungoddess like nature of his dark mistress.Conversely,Petrarch’s work is rich in imagery and not spare a syllable in its glorification and deification of the object of his desires,Laura.As can be seen in sonnet 292 from the Canzoniere,the extensive use of metaphor and the idealization of Petrarch’s female subject are characteristic of the Petrarchan sonnet.The first major difference between the two sonnets is the sonnet form used.Petrarch’s sonnet 292 is writtenin the 14-line Italian sonnet form consisting of an eight line octave and a six line sestet.The main characteristic of the Petrarchan sonnet form is its two part structure.This is achieved by splitting the eight line octave into two four line stanzas or quatrains.Similarity,the sestet is split into two three line stanzas or tercets.This form allows for development of the of two aspects of the theme,broadening the perspective piece.

Shakespeare’s 14 line English sonnet consists of a three quatrain argument,followed by a two line,couplet resolution.The form of the English sonnet allows for the developments of three perspectives on the theme through the argument,followed by the resolution,which offers either an affirmation or challenge of the preceding quatrains.While the forms of these two works may vary,they both suseed in conveying the dramatic situations of the poems.The dramatic situations found in each of these two poems are markedly different.In Petrarch’s octave,he illustrates all the beautiful qualities his love possessess.The first quatrain is dedicated to her eyes,hands,feet and face,all of which set the narrator’s exitence apart from the commonality of every day life.This listing of her attributes, or blazon,is meant for emphasis and harkens back to the tradition of courty love.Quatrain begins with the lady ”tumbled mane of uncut gold”,an allusion to the yellow braids of Petrarch’ sonnet 90.Petrarch’s narrator goes on to describe his love’s angelic smile,which together with her golden hair,turns the earh to Paradise.

He continues to the end of the octave,indicating that all of thes lovely attributes,”have come to dust;no life,no sense.His love has died and so have paradise and his exquisitely uncommon existence.The woman,whom Petrarch’s narrator had professed his love and passion for in the previous 291 sonnets of the Canzoniere,was no more.Petrarch’s tercets go on in metaphor to say the narrator has lost his guiding light and that the “dismasted ship” that is his life,has been “wracked by the storm “ of love and loss.He declares “let there be no more love songs! The dear spring/of my accustomed art has been drained dry”,indicating that he shall write no more;his lyre dissolved in his flood of tears.While Petrarch’s story is one of lost love,Shakespeare offers a different perspective in sonnet 130.

Shakespeare’s narrator loves his mistress,but describes her in a mostly peculiar way,which seems to satirize Petrarch’s overtly starry eyed prose.The dramatic situation in sonnet 130 is that of the narrator describing his lady as less than perfect.It is indicated that her beauty and features pale when compared those of nature,”if hairs be wires,black wires grow on her head./I have seen roses damasked,red and white “However,in the resolution couplet of the sonnet,the narrator still treasures her,and his rare love for exists despite all of this.This poem does not comprise any discernable part of a grander plot estableshed by other works of the author,so its apparent that this poem stands alone,with no precucursors leadin up to its situation.

In his argument,Shakespeare’s narrator supplies imagery that paints an imperfect picture of his mistress.Shakespeare’s language in this sonnet is very grounded and real,in contrast with Petrarch’s which idializes his subject and places her on a pedestal.The description of the mistress is stark and seemingly insulting throughout the argument.His style is similar to Petrarch’s,and Shakespeare seems to mirror that same tradition of blazon,comparing his lady’s features to the treasures of nature.Their similarities part,though,in their description of their subject.Petrarch appears much more idealistic and lofty in his narrative,making his woman into an angelic goddess,while Shakespeare takes a much more honest,realistic approach,recognizing the beauty a person can have within them,not just aesthetically.At one point in sonnet 130 Shakespeare actually comes right out and states that his lady is not a goddess:” I grant I never saw a goddess go,/my mistress when she waks,treads on the ground”By offering that is not goddess like,it follows that she cannot be a goddess.Petrarch’s attitude is based in in the tradition of courtly love.Where the poetry of love is concerned,there certainly could be no better example of differing approaches or attitudes than has been outlined here.While Shakespeare and Petrarch use their works to adress the subject of their loves,or in case of Petrarch,the loss of his love,they do so using different styles.