Chapter Seventy-Nine: The Sonnet Opens His Heart
In 1609, Shakespeare published the Sonnets, his last non-dramatic work. Scholars have not been able to confirm the timing of the completion of each of the 154 sonnets, but there is evidence that Shakespeare wrote them for a private audience throughout his career.
Earlier, two unlicensed sonnets appeared in The Ardent Pilgrims, published in 1599. The English writer Francis Mills once referred to in 1598 "sweet sonnets that circulate among close friends."
A small number of analysts believe that the published collection was based on Shakespeare's intentional order. It seems that he has planned two opposing series: one about the uncontrollable lust of a married dark-skinned woman, and the other about the pure love of a fair-skinned young man.
It is still unclear whether these characters represent real people, or whether the "I" in the poem represents Shakespeare himself, although the English poet William Wordsworth believed that in these sonnets "Shakespeare opened his heart".
The 1609 edition was dedicated to a "Mr. W.H.", who was referred to as the "sole promoter" of the poems. Whether the dedication was written by Shakespeare himself or added by the publisher Thomas Thorpe remains a mystery, with Thorpe's initials appearing at the end of the dedication page.
Despite all the scholarship, it is not known who Mr. "Mr. W.H." is, and it is not even clear whether Shakespeare authorized the publication of the book. Critics praised the sonnet as a profound meditation on the nature of love, sexuality, reproduction, death, and time.
Shakespeare's earliest plays were written in the style common at the time. He writes in standard language, which often does not come naturally according to the needs of the characters and the plot.
The verse is determined by the extension. Sometimes with elaborate metaphors and clever ideas, the language is often ornate and suitable for the actor to read aloud rather than speak.
Some critics have argued that the solemn rhetoric in "Titus Andronicus" often gets in the way of the plot, and that the lines in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" have been commented as artificial.
Soon Shakespeare moved away from the traditional style and into his own idiosyncrasies. The monologue at the opening of "Richard III" pioneered the role of evil in medieval theater. At the same time, Richard's vivid self-aware monologues continue into the self-talk of Shakespeare's mature plays.
There is no single play that marks the transition from traditional to free, and Shakespeare has synthesized both styles throughout his writing career, and Romeo and Juliet is probably the best interpretation of this hybrid style.
By the mid-1590s, when Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, and A Midsummer Night's Dream were written, Shakespeare began to write in a more natural script. Gradually, he turned his metaphors and symbols into the needs of plot development.
Shakespeare's usual form of poetry is unrhymed poetry combined with a rising pentata. As a matter of fact. This means that his poems are usually unrhymed. Each line has 10 syllables, and every second syllable is accented when read aloud.
There is a big difference between the unrhymed poems of his early works and his later works. Verses are often beautiful, but sentences tend to begin, pause, and end at the end of the line, which can lead to dryness.
When Shakespeare mastered the tradition of unrhymed poetry. He began to interrupt and change the pattern. This technique unleashes new power and flexibility in the poems of plays such as Julius Caesar and Hamlet. For example. In Hamlet, Scene V, Act II. Shakespeare used it to show the confusion of Hamlet's thinking:
"That night, sir, I wondered in my chest. I couldn't sleep, and I was tormented more than the shackled renegade sailor, and then I was impulsive—but I had the thought of the moment, because sometimes what we did unintentionally could be accomplished."
After Hamlet, Shakespeare's style changed even more, especially the more emotional passages in the later tragedies. The English literary critic Andrew Cecil Bradley described the style as "more compact, crisp, varied, and structurally irregular, often intricate or omitted".
Later in his career, Shakespeare employed a number of techniques to achieve these effects, including interlinear succession, irregular pauses and endings, and extreme variations in sentence structure and length.
In Macbeth, language shifts from one unrelated metaphor or metaphor to another, as in Act VII of the first scene:
"Is the hope in which you immerse yourself just a delusion of drunkenness?
"Mercy" is like a naked baby floating in the wind, and like a heavenly child who walks in the air."
Understanding the meaning in its entirety is a challenge for the audience. In the later legendary dramas, the plot changed in time and unexpectedly, creating a poetic style of the late period, which was characterized by the synthesis of long and short sentences, the arrangement of clauses together, the reversal of subject and object, and the omission of words, which produced a natural effect.
The characteristics of Shakespeare's poetry are related to the actual effect of the theater. Like all playwrights of the era, Shakespeare dramatized stories created by the likes of Francesco Petrarch and Raphael Hollingshead.
He adapted each plot to create several focal points for the audience's attention, while showing the audience as many fragments of the story as possible. The design features ensure that Shakespeare's plays can be translated into other languages, cut, and interpreted with ease, without losing the core plot.
As Shakespeare's skills improved, he gave his characters clearer and more varied motivations and a unique style when speaking. However, in his later works, he retains the characteristics of his earlier style. In later saga plays, he deliberately switched back to a more false style, which focused on the effect of the theater.
Shakespeare's writings had a lasting impact on later plays and literature. In fact, he expanded the characterization of the drama, the narrative of the plot, the expression of language, and the literary genre. For example, until Romeo and Juliet, the legendary drama was not considered a tragic subject worthy of creation.
Monologues were previously used primarily to inform the transition between characters or scenes, but Shakespeare used them to explore the minds of characters. His works had a significant influence on later poetry. The Romantic poets tried to revive Shakespeare's poetic plays, but with little success.
The critic George Steiner considered all English poetic plays, from Coleridge to Tennyson, "minor variations in the themes of Shakespeare's works."
Shakespeare also influenced novelists such as Thomas Hardy, William Faulkner, and Charles Dickens. There are 25 references to Shakespeare in Dickens's works.
The American novelist Herman Melville's monologue owes much to Shakespeare: Captain Ahab in his Moby Dick is a classic tragic hero with a shadow of King Lear.
Scholars have identified 20,000 pieces of music as relevant to Shakespeare's works. These include two of Giuseppe Verdi's operas, Otello and Falstaff, which are on par with the originals.
Shakespeare also influenced many painters, including Romanticism and the Pre-Raphaelites. William Blake's close friend, the Swiss Romantic artist John Heinri Hifessley, even translated Macbeth into German.
The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud cited the psychoanalysis of Shakespeare's works, especially Hamlet, in his theory of human nature.
In Shakespeare's time, English grammar and spelling were not as standardized as they are now, and his use of language influenced modern English. Semere Jensen quoted Shakespeare more than any other writer in the Jensen's Dictionary, the first monograph in the field.
Phrases such as "withbatedbreath" (meaning "breathlessly" from The Merchant of Venice) and "aforegoneconclusion" (meaning "expected ending" from Othello) are now used in everyday English. (To be continued......)