Shakespeare: Sonnets + The tempest

WHAT IS THE MEANING?

- Immortilizing someone though the poetry. We find it already in Sidney’s sonnet. So this sonnet

also belong to the Immorality Sonnet. (il potere immortalante coinvolge l’autore della poesia, il

destinatario e il pubblico)

- Everything flows and get down/decays.

Why a lot of poets identify humankind as a tree? Because it has roots and his “arms” goes high in the

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sky. It also concentrate all the four elements tree is rooted in earth and it needs water. Air is the

element around the tree. But fire? Oak were the holy tree for Celts and Romans believed aok was the

one that atracted the lighting, so they were considered linked to Zeus.

SONNET 18

It’s a Wedding Sonnet and Immortality Sonnet.

Posso paragonarti ad un giorno d’estate? Tu sei più amabile e più temperato

Summer:youth’s climatic moment

Temperate = it alludes both to the season and to temperence, one of the Virtues.

D’estate i venti rudi/forti scuotono i cari boccioli di Maggio. (in the first sonnet the lovely boy were

represented as a rose’beauty)

E l’affitto dell’estate ha una scadenza troppo ravvicinata.

Qualche volta l’occhio del cielo (sole) brucia troppo and spesso la sua carnagione d’oro si offusca.

COMPLEXION: what is the root of this term? Complexion means “carnagione” which depends by the

mixture of the four humours.

E ogni bellezza talvolta declina dalla bellezza (quando si raggiunge il picco, ogni perde la sua bellezza).

Ogni bellezza è non curata, non potata dal corso del tempo come richiederebbe la natura.

UNTRIMMED: potare (we are again in the same semantic field of human as plant.

Ma la tua estate eterna (your eternal Youth), che non è rude nè bollente non scemerà, non svanirà mai;

e non perderai il possesso di quella bellezza che ti è dovuta.

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But seems to be similar to Italian sonnet structure

Ne la Morte si vanterà del fatto che tu vaghi nella sua ombra, perchè tu ti innesti nel tempo attraverso

queste rime immortali.

GROW: engraft

Eternal lines: poet’s rhyme or progeny/ereditary line (another pan).

Finchè gli uomini potranno respirare o gli uomini potranno vedere, questo continuerà a vivere e questo

di darà vita. (you will become immortal as time)

THIS: my lines, my sonnet.

SONNET 20

It was considered obscene. Oscar wilde reconsidered it and thanks to this sonnet that Wilde though the

name of the ovely boy was William Hues. (line 7).

Un volto di donna dipinto dalla stessa mano della Natura,

The lovely boy has a female face. But his face is not covered with the makeup, but his beauty has to do

with the Nature (his beauty is natural).

Hai tu, padrone/padrona – signore/signora – innamorato/innamorata – maestro/maestra della mia

passione;

Un cuore gentile di donna, ma non avvezzo ai cambi mutevoli tipici della moda delle donne;

Hai un occhio più brillante delle donne e civetti di meno. 

Il tuo occhio trasforma in oro l’oggetto che guarda. (Alchemy is behind this sonnet alchemy is the key

which can help us understanding the sonnet).

Un uomo nella bellezza assoluta che domina tutte le altre bellezze.

HUE: sfumature, bellezza, aspetto, forma, fantasma.

Che fa innamorare gli occhi degli uomini e stupisci le anime delle donne.

E sebbene tu fosti creato all’inizio donna, finchè la Natura mentre ti confezionava si innamorò di te, e ti

aggiunse qualcosa che a me non serve.

1780 Joyce Steevens is the publisher of almoust all the Shakespeare’s sonnets. He said when he read the

sonnet 20 he feels an equal mixture of indignation and disgution.

This sonnet is unique and the features that make that sonnet unique:

- It doesn’t belong to any group of sonnet (no Marriage sonnets; no Immortality sonnet);

- It is not link to the procreation;

- The tone is different, is unique (there’s no other sonnet like it);

- The images in here are not present anywhere;

Hamlet and the lovely boy has a lot of things in common.

STYLE ANALYSIS 

There’s no iambic pentametre (5 feet) it’s a pentametre with an extra syllable (in Italian it’s called

“sdrucciola”; the French “female” /Defense of Poetry/)

English lit uses pentrametre because the language is short and contract: most of the words are

monosyllabic.

But in this sonnet the stress is in the second syllable. The last syllable doesn’t count, so it is a

pentrametre.

The most repeated word in the sonnet is “woman” (six times). 

PASSION (line 2) = “lettura critica e metacritica del sonetto 20 di Shakespeare) he said “passion” is

one the most frequent word in this sonnet. It has the double meaning of erotic love (the dark lady) and

platonic love (the lovely boy). In this sonnet the lovely boy present both the types of love. In the

Rennaisence “passion” also means poem (so it is a very pan).

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GIORGIO MELCHIORI this sonnet is an exporation of the double expects inside every man.

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VIRGINIA WOOLF the real genius is not just male or female, but the complete personality has to be

woman male or female man. To to be a genius you have to have an androgenus mind (she describes as

that Shakespeare and Colleridge).

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WILSON KNIGHT he defines Shakespeare as Supersexual or Bisexual.

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RUSSELL FRASER he claimes that Shakespeare was and androgenius personality.

We can deduce that the real Shakespeare is considered as a complete person. In “Richard II” the very

king close to the abdication scene he said: I will prove my brain is female while my soul is male. The

years in which “Richard II” was played Shakespeare was composing the sonnets.

The young andregenious described in all the sonnets is the model, the archetype of beauty.

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NORTHROP FRYE he claims we can identify the lovely boy both to Christ and Eros/ Dioniso and Apollo.

In sonnet 106 the lovely boy is identify with the ladies dead and lovely knights. In sonnet 53 he is

identify with Helen and Adonis.

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HELEN VENDLER she claims this sonnet is a sonnet that presents the myth of creation. According to

Galen’s theories all the embrios are originally female. Then they remain female or they become mae

thanks to that addiction which is described in the sonnet.

Sonnet 20 and sonnet 53 are the ones used by Wilde to create his theory about the lovely boy’s identity.

She also says that every line of th sonnet has the letters that composed the word “HEWES”, the real

spelling of “HUES”. And also “HUES” is at the centre of the central line.

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The lovely boy was described as the perfect courtain according to “IL CORTEGIANO”, the courtain has

the perfect mixture of the four humours: he says that the perfect courtain has to have a blood which can

defined him as he is by first sight (BLOOD= the sanest humour). Blood was translated in “ASPETTO,

PRESENZA”, one the meanings of “HEWES/HUES”.

The lovely boy has the features of a woman, but not the defects of a woman.

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There’s a lot of references about Alchemy according to Alchemy, the aim of it is returning to a

condition of Androgeny. In the Bible in fact it’s said that God had created manking originally

androginous (both female and male) and He called them Adam.

ALCHEMICAL PROCESS in three parts:

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- Negredo original caos;

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- Albedo central process;

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- Rubedo creation of the Gold, which is Yellow and Red. (as yellow and red Bile).

The creation of the Philosopher Stone is represented as a marriage, an union between King and

Queen.

Alchemists had to create gold, so eterna life. Shakespeare through his poems are able to garantee

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eternal life to the lovely boy poem can be seen as an Alchemical instrument. With all the initial 19

sonnets, in the sonnet 20 the lovely boy is described as eternal and perfect, so androgenuous.

SONNET 127

It is the first sonnet devoted not to the lovely boy, but to the dark lady.

DARKNESS: it’s important also in “The Tempest”, because Caliban will be described as a “thing of

darkness”.

It’s a relativistic POV: there’s unique views. There’s no centre anymore (Astronomic Theories), and I can

be the centre and my view as well. Poet represents what is fair for him but not for all.

Nei tempi passati il nero non era considerato bello/ giusto/innocente/puro/sincero. O, se lo era, non

portava di certo il nome della bellezza.

Ma ora il nero è l’erede della bellezza e la Bellezza è infamata con il marchio di bastarda (the actors and

the prostitutes wear the bastard shame):

Perchè dato che ogni mano si è arrogato il potere della Natura (using Makeup), facendo diventare bello

il brutto, con il volto falso preso in prestito dell’arte.

SONNETS ARE REALLY MISOGENIOUS.

La vera bellezza oggi non ha più nome nè santuario sacro, oggi la vera bellezza è profanata, se no vive in

disgrazia.

Gli occhi della mia amata sono neri come il corvo, che sembrano vestiti a lutto per tutte quelle donne

che, non nate belle/bionde si procurano la bellezza con l’artificio, diffamando con falsa apparenza la

Natura creatrice.

Tuttavia gli occhi della dark lady portano il lutto con cosi tanta grazia che ogni lingua dice che la bellezza

dovrebbe essere così.

THE TEMPEST 

It’s a tragecomedy then considered a Romance. It’s a eneral riconciliation, a final salvation from all

the negativity that filled al the beggining of the story. There’s also a riunion of old and young generation.

All the Romances have something on common: the salvation (that’s why a lot of critics think that

Shakespeare convert himself to Catholicism).

In the first representation of th play, there was a very important image as propaganda in the image

we can see in distance Prospero directing the storm with his wand like a music director while the storm

is in the front of the image.

PLOT

The romance opens with the ship break. The royal of Naple land there, on the isle. There’s also Antonio,,

Prospero’s brother and usurping Duke of Milan. In the Black Friars the company had the ability to create

a real storm.

The following scene is between Prospero and Miranda. They are father and daughter, but also master

and pupil. It’s the time Miranda has to know what were the events that led her and her father on the

isle.

In the ship with Antonio and the others we find the mariners and 2 drunker: Stephano and Trinculo, who

will become the helper of Caliban. All the people in the ship manage to arrive to land and they formed a

little group, each convenced that they are the only to have been survived to the ship disaster.

FILM: Prospero’s books (Greenaway).

Thanks to flashbacks Prospero make us aware of what happend during those 12 years.<