УДК811.111’38:821.111193.3.ІШ/7.08
Захуцька О. В., студентка 5 курсу
TRADITIONS AND INNOVATIONS BY
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IN THE
DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH SONNET
У статті розглядаються традиції та новаторство Шекспіра#
творця англійської форми сонету, на противагу італійській, їх
особливості, спільні та відмінні риси.
Ключові слова: сонет, схема римування, п’ятистопний ямб,
метафора.
In English poetry the sonnet takes an important place. The most
famous masters of verse used this form with enthusiasm. And even
if there are fewer sonnets in English than in French or Italian, still
there are a lot of them. And their best part undoubtedly belongs to
the greatest achievements of the English poetry. The English sonnet,
its peculiarities and tendencies in development were studied by such
scientists as Gayley, Leigh Hunt, Wright; Gorbunov, Klimenko.
The sonnet came to England from Italy. There it evolved during the
high Italian Middle Ages in lyrics of Sicilian poets, but most famously was
developed in the vernacular lyrics of Dante Alighieri (12651321) and
Francesco Petrarch (13041374), who worked out the sonnet form to
perfection and gave it unknown before flexibility and melodiousness [1,41].
The form spread through Spain and France and was skillfully
refined by the French “Pleiade” poets Joachim DuBellay (15221560)
and Pierre Ronsard (15241585). French and Italian poets favored
the Italian sonnet form – fourteen lines (written in iambic
pentameter), divided into two quatrains (i.e. fourline stanzas) with
only two rhymes in both: abba abba. The two quatrains are
followed by two tercets (i.e. threeline stanzas), variously rhymed
“ccd eed” or “ccd ede”. It is preferable to alternate female (a)
and male (b) rhymes. This condensed five rhyme palette (ae) creates
a sonorous music in the vowel rich Romance languages, but in
English the scheme can sound contrived and monotonous [6].
To England the sonnet was introduced by Sir Thomas Wyatt
(15031542) following his various European diplomatic positions,
including Italy, in the court of Henry the Eighth. The form was then
developed by Henry Surrey (15171547) and became very popular
with several Elizabethan sonneteers, particularly during the 1590s,
© Захуцька О. В.
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among them Shakespeare. But English authors were not satisfied
with the strict frames of the Italian sonnet and were trying to find
their own form, modifying and developing the existing one. Soon there
evolved a specifically English form of the sonnet, distinct from the
Petrarchan in a number of ways, and often referred to as the
Shakespearean sonnet, not just because he was the first to write in this
form but also because he became its most famous practitioner [3].
When Shakespeare began to write his sonnets around 1590 (they were
published in 1609), the tradition of iambic pentameter, developed by such
poets as Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney and Spenser, had relatively set features:
1) a tensyllable iambic line;
2) a conventional midline break, usually dividing the line into
a group of four syllables and a group of six syllables;
3) a predominance of endstopped lines;
4) a fairly regular congruence between the metrical pattern and
the verse instance, i.e. a minimal number of labeling and bracketing
mismatches or degrees of complexity [6].
Shakespeare’s sonnets consist of three quatrains and a couplet.
The couplet generally introduced an unexpected sharp thematic or
imagistic “turn” called a volta. A sonnet was also an argument – it
built up a certain way. And how it built up was related to its
metaphors and how it moved from one metaphor to the next. In a
Shakespearean sonnet the argument builds up like this:
First metaphor: An exposition of the main theme and main
metaphor.
Second metaphor: The theme and metaphor extended or
complicated; often some imaginative example is given.
Third metaphor: Peripeteia (a twist or conflict), often
introduced by a “but” (very often leading off the ninth line).
Couplet: Summarizes and leaves the reader with a new,
concluding image.
One of Shakespeare’s bestknown sonnets, Sonnet 18, follows this
pattern. In the first quatrain Shakespeare establishes the theme of
comparing “thou” to a summer’s day, and why to do so is a bad idea.
The metaphor is made by comparing his beloved to summer itself. The
second quatrain extends the theme, explaining why even the sun,
supposed to be so great, gets obscured sometimes, and why everything
that is beautiful decays from beauty sooner or later. He has shifted
the metaphor: in the first quatrain it was “Summer” in general, and
now he is comparing the sun and “every fair”, every beautiful thing
to his beloved. In quatrain three the argument takes a big left turn
with the familiar “But”. Shakespeare says that the main reason he
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won’t compare his beloved to summer is that summer dies but she
won’t. He Jseeps the metaphors going, but in a different direction.
He throws in a negative version of all the sunshine in this poem the
“shade” of death, which, evidently, his beloved won’t have to worry
about. How is his beloved going to escape death? In Shakespeare’s
poetry, which will keep her alive as long as people breathe or see. This
bold statement gives closure to the whole argument – it is a surprise.
A set rhyme scheme of the English sonnet is “ababcdcdefefgg”.
Shakespeare’s verse flows melodiously and there is no impression
of monotony thanks to the poet’s wonderful technical skills; the author
masterly wielded rhyme, assonance, alliteration and other devices,
which he always subordinated to the train of thought. “The very
Shakespeare’s thought is expressed in the form of theme and variations,
thesis and antithesis and, whatever bitter it could be, the author always
kept a definite distance between himself and the main character’s
emotions, leaving incandescence of passions for tragic characters such
as Othello and Lear” [5]. The word and thought in the sonnets are, as a
rule, harmonic, the images are taken from everyday life, the vocabulary
is rather simple, and in contradistinction to great tragedies and late
tragicomedies “the thought does not prevail over the word” [4].
The brilliant combination of perfect artistic form with rich
notional content made Shakespeare’s sonnets a wonderful aesthetic
monument to ancient epoch, in which the outstanding humanist told
about his most intimate and deepest feelings and imprinted the story
of soul of the advanced person from the English Renaissance.
References
1. Английский сонет XVIXIX веков: Сборник/Сост. А. Л. Зорин. – На
англ. яз. с параллельным русским текстом. – М.: Радуга, 1990. – 698 с.
2. Аникст А. Лирика Шекспира // Шекспир У. Сонеты. – На англ.
яз. С параллельным русским текстом / Сост. А. Н. Горбунов. –
М.: Радуга, 1984. – С. 1935.
3. Клименко Е. И. Традиции и новаторство в английской литера
туре. – Л., 1961. – 367 с.
4. Шекспир в мировой литературе: Сборник статей / Под ред. Б.
Реизова. – М. – Л.: Художественная литература, 1964. – 384 с.
5. Halliday F. E. Shakespeare and his Critics. – L., 1958. – 480 p.
6. http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/glossaryltem.do?id =8084
Summary
The article deals with traditions and innovations of William
Shakespeare as the creator of the English form of the sonnet, different
from the Italian one, their peculiarities, common and distinct features.
Key words: sonnet, rhyming scheme, iambic pentameter, metaphor.
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