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Stuart Bryan 311183018

Stuart Bryan ENGL2658 Assignment


It is widely assumed that Elizabethan Sonneteers followed a pattern embodied in their
Petrarchan forebears, and that thematic deviations are the result of misdirection.1
There is an expectation that the speaker will exalt a platonic love for an impossibly
beautiful, ethereal mistress, using a set of familiar established conventions.2 To
approach Elizabethan Sonnets through this framework, however, is to discount the
complexities and nuances of the ways in which love and desire may be explored.
Indeed, in Philip Sidneys Sonnet 2 (of the Astrophil and Stella sequence) the poet
takes the hyperbolic Petrarchan clich of a hapless figure struck down by personified
Love and imbues the experience with melancholic, even violent undertones. In
Shakespeares Sonnet 18, the powerful idolisation of the addressee is subverted by
contextual homoeroticism. Therefore, while both poems superficially conform to
Petrarchan treatments of love, closer analysis reveals a clash of motifs, a clash that
shows that any generic categorisation is unable to contain or indeed constrain the
diverse experiences of human love and desire.

In the octaves of each sonnet, the thematic development of love resembles those
found in Petrarchan poetray. In Sonnet 2 the octave presents the stereotype of a
passive lover, at the mercy of personified love. Love is forceful and unexpected, the
imagery in line 2s wound given by love which will bleed as long as he lives
endowing love with aggressive attributes. This figure, Love is immediately
personified as a sentient external force, employing a cupid motif that reoccurs
1
2

Ransom, J.C : Shakespeare at Sonnets', The World's Body (New York), 1938, p. 286
Hunter, GK: Essays in Criticism, Vol 3 Edition 2, Oxford University press, 1953, p 152-164

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throughout the sequence. The motif strengthens the idea of a domineering,
mischievous form of love that has overcome the speaker physically and mentally. In
the first quatrain Love attacks him slowly, not with a dribbed shot (line 1), but in a
veiled and underhand manner. It is worth noting here the unusual turn of phrase
Sidney employs in but known worth did in mine of time proceed, Mine of time
being a subterranean metaphor referring to infiltrating enemy castles3. The undertones
of of this place Love as Astrophils opponent, a malevolency that he is overcome
by. Evidently, the speaker has not fallen in love with Stella in the conventional sense,
but rather submits to the pressure exerted upon him by the forceful Love. His
reluctance to this effect is epitomised in the halting punctuation in line 7s I Forced
Agreed, giving a rhythm that imitates a man being dragged into something against
his will.1

While Sonnet 2s octave presents a speaker overwhelmed by a forceful and insidious


love, Sonnet 18s concerns the speakers direct declaration of devotion. The poet
begins with a powerful comparative metaphor in Shall I compare thee to a summers
day? Light, almost innocuous in tone, he selects an example from nature as a
comparison abounding in connotations of pristine beauty and purity. Immediately, he
begins to denigrate the very example he has just brought in order to exalt the
ineffable, wordless, ethereal beauty of his love. Line 2 enables the sustention of the
comparison, with each subsequent description of the deficiencies of a summers day
heightening the speakers devotion and love to the addressee. Double meanings and
wordplay abound throughout the octave, with temperate praising her humorous
3

Jonathan Smith, Astrophil and Stella, Sonnet 2, 2012, Accessed 22 March 2013, available from;
http://blogs.hanover.edu/astrophil/2012/08/09/astrophil-and-stella-sonnet-2/

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disposition while maintaining the weather analogy.4 Although the manner in which
the comparative metaphor is used to heighten the speakers devotion to his addressee,
it in itself is not an unusual representation of love. It is in the sestet (the third quatrain
and couplet in Sonnet 18), then, where the second conflicting motifs enter the sonnets,
rendering their treatments of love far more complex than Petrarchan stereotypes.

The sestet in Sonnet 2 builds upon the reluctant yielding to love established in the
octave. His state is a paradoxical one, the speaker asserting that he calls it praise to
suffer tyranny, needing to find happiness in his misery. It is himself, rather than
Stella, that he needs to convince that all is well. Absent is the sudden ecstasy found
in Marlowes Who ever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight. Sidney subverts the
Petrarchan undercurrent that, despite the current agony love has created, that the
turbulent emotional state will be rectified. There is instead a sullen, slave-like
resignation to love. In line 8s volta, Sidney characterizes love as like a jailer,
imprisoning him and leaving him to come to terms with his plight. His mental state
deteriorates, and by line 12 his conviction is all but gone, the poet suggesting a
descent into madness as he needs to employ the last remnant of [my] wit as with a
feeling skill he paints his hell. The conflicting double meaning of the metaphor
contained in the last line epitomizes the poets ambiguous attitude towards love.
Astrophil, as Hamilton notes, is divided against himself5, and eventually admits his
need to delude himselfcreate a false front to conceal the hellish situation he finds
himself in. His hell may be the Petrarchan meaning of hell, one that is ephemeral
and will emerge into fervent platonic desire for Stella. But the tone of the rest of the
4

Robert H. Ray: Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, The Explicator, Vol. 53, No. 1 (1994) p. 10
Hamilton, A.C: Sidney's Astrophel and Stella as a Sonnet Sequence, ELH, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Mar.,
1969), p. 69
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sonnet suggests a darker alternative, a psychological hell that Astrophil needs to
make the best of.1

While the sestet in sonnet 2 presents a love fraught with confusion, ambiguity and
even misery, at the volta in Sonnet 18 the poem shifts to a pensive, reflective
examination of the speakers love and the depths it reaches. In line 7 and 8, the
inevitability of decaying beauty is in sharp counterpoint to the opening couplet
affirming the ineffable beauty of the speaker. Even the holistic pure beauty of his
love, will sometime decline as all things in nature must. However, a marked shift
occurs at the volta in line 9, the conjunction but used to override the implications of
line 7 and 8. For the speakers love transcends temporal limits, sustaining the
summer metaphor and claiming her beauty as eternal. This is most demonstrable in
lines 10, 11 and 12 where repeated hyperboles concerning her immortal beauty
suggest that even death [shall] brag thou wanderst in his shade, providing her with
an ineffable mysticism made possible by the strength of his affection. In the last
couplet the speaker moves away from the abstract and provides the audience
quantification; his love and her beauty shall as long as men can breathe, measures
which add weight to the words themselves.

So, what aspect of love within the sestet deviates from the Petrarchan clich? The
answer lies in the poetic context of the piece. There is wide critical acknowledgement
that the first 126 of Shakespeares sonnets are addressed to a man, or fair youth.6 With
this in mind; the speakers eternal devotion to a beauty that shall not fade is infused

Fort, J. A: The Order and Chronology of Shakespeares Sonnets, Review of English Studies
(1933)
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with a poignancy that accompanies cultural taboo and social condemnation. The love
is forbidden, yet regardless the speaker maintains that it will last forever. Moreover,
the palpable fervency with which the love is expressed is only enriched and deepened
in knowing that homoeroticism was illegal. Arguably, then, reading Sonnet 18 in
context reveals that the treatment of love subverts both social and Petrarchan
conventions concerning the nature of love itself.

Universally pertinent themes of love and desire are not immutable. Their
manifestations, the way they are explored in the sonnets prove the diversity of the
experience itself. Thus, to approach Elizabethan Sonnets through the framework of
Petrarchan representations of love and desire is misguided. In Sonnet 2, Astrophil
struggles to reconcile the paradox between his misery and the knowledge that his love
should bestow joy. Concordantly, Shakespeares powerful declaration of devotion and
his meditations on the nature of beauty and the eternality of his love are inflected by
the contextual homoerotic undertones to the poem. Stylistically both sonnets
seemingly bear resemblance to their Petrarchan forebears. But it is the deviations
from the Petrarchan archetype that the conflicting motifs of love and desire embody.
Subversions that, ultimately, testify to a human experience that is unable to be
constrained by any one academic framework.

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Bibliography

1. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Second edition: Volume 2:


The Renaissance and the Early Seventeenth Century. Broadview Press. 2010
2. John Crowe Ransom, Shakespeare at Sonnets' in The World's Body (New
York), 1938, p. 286
3. Jonathan Smith, Astrophil and Stella, Sonnet 2, 2012, Accessed 22 March
2013, available from http://blogs.hanover.edu/astrophil/2012/08/09/astrophiland-stella-sonnet-2/
4. Robert H. Ray: Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, The Explicator, Vol. 53, No. 1
(1994) p. 10
5. Hamilton, A.C: Sidney's Astrophil and Stella as a Sonnet Sequence, ELH,
Vol. 36, No. 1 (Mar., 1969), p. 69
6. Fort, J. A: The Order and Chronology of Shakespeares Sonnets, Review of
English Studies (1933)

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