Question — Essay-type
Attempt a brief survey of the Elizabethan sonneteers.
Introduction
The sonnet in English literature is a foreign importation. The term ‘sonnet’ has come from the Italian ‘sonnetto’ means a sound, a song. It is originated in Italy. The sonnet, in a general sense, is a short poem of fourteen lines with a special arrangement for rhymes, and generally, it treats one thought or emotion.
Thomas Wyatt
Sir Thomas Wyatt, who was the innovator of the English sonnet, is found to follow Petrarch. In Wyatt, as in Petrarch, is seen a convention of personal emotion in which the poet at least seems to be singing of his own heart.
Earl of Surrey
Wyatt was successfully followed by his contemporary and follower, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. Surrey’s attempt is not to imitate Petrarch blindly. In him is found the variation in the rhyme-scheme to suit the purpose of English poetry. The new form introduced by Surrey comprises three quatrains with a closing couplet. The theme is stated in the first twelve lines and then the conclusion is drawn suddenly in the concluding couplet. Different forms of rhymes used by Surrey include abba–cdcd–effe–gg, abab–abab–abab–cc, or abab–cdcd–efef–gg, and the last one is found to win popularity soon as the Shakespearean form.
Both Wyatt and Surrey, however, have followed the Italian theme of love with its passion and pang. In the singleness of mood, imagery and emotion, they are more or less the imitators of the Italian sonneteers. Their sonnets were published in Tottel’s Miscellany, a volume of miscellaneous poems.
Philip Sidney
The next remarkable name among the English sonneteers is Sir Philip Sidney. His Astrophel and Stella contains a series of 108 sonnets about his own frustrated love for Penelope, the daughter of the Earl of Essex. Of course, he followed Petrarch in the Italian master’s Poetic Worship of Laura in the first series of his sonnets. In fact, this sonnet-series shows the poet’s intense personal experience.
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser, a great name in Elizabethan poetry, also attempted sonnets. His sonnet-series ‘Amoretti’, a collection of 89 sonnets, has actually an Italian title inspired by Petrarch. The sonnets are addressed to his lady-love, Elizabeth Boyle, who became his wife, and contain some autobiographical matters. The sonnets, written in his maturity, reveal his efforts to introduce further innovation in the rhyme-scheme. In fact, his sonnets appear artificial beside Sidney’s, but in colourful imagery and sonorous melody, his superiority is unquestionable. Most of his sonnets consist of three quatrains, each alternately rimed, with a riming couplet.
Other Sonneteers
Between the publication of Sidney’s ‘Astrophel and Stella’ in 1591 and the appearance of Shakespeare’s sonnets, there came a number of sonnets, written by different poets. The next six years show the birth of numerous volumes of sonnet-sequences which owed much to the incentive of Astrophel and Stella and Henry Constable’s Diana, another sonnet-sequence.
William Shakespeare
The greatest name in the English sonnets is the greatest name in the English theatre–William Shakespeare. One hundred and fifty four [154] sonnets of Shakespeare stand out as the specimens of his unparalleled art. One hundred and twenty six sonnets [126] are addressed to a young man of a rather uncertain identity. Two sonnets are about Cupid, and the remaining twenty six are addressed to an unknown dark lady, better known as Dark Lady sonnets. Shakespeare’s sonnets are somewhat different from from the conventional sonnets of the Elizabethan period. These are not merely about sex-love, addressed to a fair but unresponsive lady-love, but of masculine friendship also. Even in the Dark Lady sonnets, no Petrarchan convention is followed by him. They are more realistic, and have not the sentimental adoration of the lady-love. The lady in Shakespeare’s sonnets is dark, not beautiful, frail and cruel, not constant and kind. The form used in Shakespeare’s sonnets, as pointed out already, was invented by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. The fourteen lines of Shakespearean sonnets is divided into four parts—three quatrains and a concluding couplet. There are altogether seven rhymes (ab, ab, cd, cd, ef, ef, gg).
Religious Sonneteers
Though later to appear, John Donne is not an ignorable name in the history of the English sonnet. Like Shakespeare’s Donne’s sonnets have not followed the beaten track of the Petrarchan sonneteers. He has made his sonnets quite novel and original. Religious fervour, mysticism and fear are also found to have their way into the English sonnet with Donne. In his Holy Sonnets is found the blending of the sublime and the homely.
Drummond is the author of holy sonnets. Here, again, Christian devotion and spiritual mystery and ecstacy are the theme of sonnets. Drummond, who was a Scotsman, started writing sonnet on the Elizabethan pattern just before the great queen’s death. With Donne and Drummond, religious have come to stay in the English sonnet.
