Download Shakespearean Sonnets and Petrarchan Sonnets

Shakespearean Sonnets within the parameters of Petrarchan
Sonnets- an Analogy
Under the formal modern definition, the sonnet is a fourteen- line poem, usually written in
pentameter verse, though Sidney, for example, sometimes used hexameters, and there have
been other variations. The fourteen-line sonnet can be divided into two sorts – the Italian or the
Petrarchan on the one hand, and the Shakespearean on the other. The Italian poet Petrarch
(1304-74) did not invent the Petrarchan form: it was used earlier by Dante (1265-1321) and his
circle, but Petrarch use of this form of sonnet to celebrate his beloved Laura made it widely
known, and it was imitated much notably in France by Ronsard and Du Belley. The Petrarchan
sonnet is composed of an octave – an initial passage of eight lines, rhyming abbaabba – followed
by a sestet – six lines requiring that each line have a rhyming mate. In addition to the separation
of octave from sestet by rhyme- scheme, there is almost invariably a subtle but dramatic shift, a
change of tone or a point of view, introduced by the sestet and bringing to the poem a sort of
resolution or revelation. The sever restriction placed on the rhyming words despite the fact that it
is very much more difficult to deal with it in English, the Petrarchan Sonnet has become the
preferred form used by Milton, Wordsworth and many more recent poets.
The Shakespearean sonnet, too, is named after its most famous practitioner, but as a form it
was firmly established and was used by Shakespeare's predecessors and contemporaries,
including Spenser, Surrey, Sidney, Lodge, Drayton, Fletcher and Lynche. It consists of three
quatrains rhyming abab cdcd efef and concluding with a rhymed couplet gg. This form is
particularly easy 'catch by ear' and identified when spoken aloud. The final six lines of a sonnet
even though written in Shakespearean form can become its sestet, and Shakespeare often
seemed to think of his sonnets in terms of the Italian division including the dramatic or rhetorical
relationship of octave to sestet. This is clearly the case in Sonnet 35, and Shakespeare enjoyed
the rather luxurious advantage of being able to write his sonnets in the spirit of either the form
named after him or the Petrarchan fashion, as can be shown by comparing Sonnet 73 and
Sonnet 18
Sonnet 73 is the perfect example of the Shakespearean form. Three quatrains each with its
own governing figure of decline, serve as incremental parts of a discourse; each parallels and
reinforces the other with beauty and delicacy of detail, and describes the inexorable truth of the
natural world's mutability. William Empson's imaginative account of the forth line is famous; there
is no pun, double syntax or dubiety of feeling in
"Bare ruined choirs, where late the birds sang" (73)
the cold and narcissistic charm suggested by choir boys suits well with Shakespeare's feeling for
the object of the Sonnets, and for various sociological and historical reasons, which it would be
hard now to trace out in their proportions. It should be added that while these two canonical
varieties of the Sonnet predominate among Shakespeare's ventures in the form, there are
individual sonnets that deviate from both; for rhetorical purposes, or under the pressure of
overwhelming feelings the 'divisions' of some Sonnets are at odds with both the Petrarchan and
the Shakespearean convention, (examples- sonnets 66, 154, 145).
Sonnet 18 offers a direct contrast to Sonnet 73 in form and structure. This Sonnet (Shall I
Compare…) is decisively Petrarchan, notwithstanding its Shakespearean rhyme -scheme. To
begin with it is rhetorically divided into octave and sestet, the change between the two parts is
balanced on the fulcrum of the word 'but' at the beginning of the ninth line. The poem is widely
and deservedly admired. Great riches of implication are packed into the interrogatory first line,
which is a single sentence. The poem disposes us to think of Hamlet's description of his father as
"so loving to my mother…/ visit her face too roughly." The octave concludes with a vital distinction
between 'chance' and 'nature's changing course'. King Lear abounds in this sort of apocalyptic
chaos of vanity and disorder, and it is this chaos of vanity that is quietly implied in Sonnet 18 by
the word 'chance'.
The relations between Shakespeare's Sonnets and the Petrarchan discourse of love are
inextricably initiated in the early poems, the Petrarchan elements of which mingle sometimes
harmoniously, sometimes discordantly, with the non-Petrarchan. Although Shakespeare's
persona uses the Narcissus myth to suggest the self-absorption of the young man whose beauty
he celebrates so elaborately in this and in the early sonnets, he does not use it simply to imply
that between himself and the young man there exists a relationship akin to that between a
Petrarchan lover and the idealized object of his desire. They imply, of course, that the youth's
narcissism exiles him from the world, no matter how resplendent and how prominent he may
seem to be within it. Although the first nineteen Sonnets Shakespeare's persona does not
celebrate a female object of desire in Petrarchan terms, he does not represent the youth as a
counterpart to the ideal lady of Petrarchan tradition.
It must be said that Shakespeare's Sonnets are in general metrically regular, especially by
comparison with the great liberties he took with meter in his later plays. Since it was at times a
part of Shakespeare's poetic strategy to invert, parody or burlesque sonnets in the conventional
Petrarchan tradition – for instance, Sonnet 130: 'My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun'- it
may be useful to illustrate this device by citing just a model along with Shakespeare's irreverent
treatment of the same conventions. The set of metaphors, involving notions of fidelity to the point
of death, loyalty, treason, betrayal and triumph- figures with deliberate allowance made for the
irony of its deployment, and wittily employs all the ancient metaphors of vassalage and faithful
military service, of warfare and victory that had been part of the Petrarchan conventions but which
are here adapted to carnal purposes where before they had served the most discarnate and
spiritual ends.
Varsha Jha
English(Hons),
Presidency College, Kolkata