Olga Dolgusheva

British and American literature

Composed by Olga Dolgusheva

Lecture notes 2.
English Renaissance Poetry

1. The Renaissance as a phenomenon in European humanistic culture. English

Renaissance.
2. Sonnet as a leading poetic genre. Italian and English sonnet modes/canons.
3. English Renaissance poets: Th. Wyatt, H. Surrey, W. Raleigh and
E. Spenser.
4. The first English literary Apology for Poetry by Ph.Sidney. Ph. Sidney’s
poetic practices.
5. Shakespearean sonnets: humanism and late humanism features.

1. The Renaissance as a phenomenon in European humanistic culture.

English Renaissance.

Renaissance, (French: “Rebirth”) period in European civilization immediately

following the Middle Ages (14-16th centuries) and conventionally held to have been
characterized by a surge of interest in Classical scholarship and values.
The Renaissance also witnessed the discovery and exploration of new continents,
the substitution of the Copernican (heliocentric) for the Ptolemaic system of astronomy
(geocentric), the decline of the feudal system and the growth of commerce, and the
invention or application of such potentially powerful innovations as paper, printing, the
mariner’s compass, and gunpowder.
While the spirit of the Renaissance ultimately took many forms, it was expressed
earliest by the intellectual movement called humanism.
Humanism had several significant features.
First, it took human nature in all of its various manifestations and achievements
as its subject.
Second, it stressed the unity and compatibility of the truth found in all
philosophical and theological schools and systems, a doctrine known as syncretism.
Third, it emphasized the dignity of man. In place of the medieval ideal of a life of
penance as the highest and noblest form of human activity, the humanists looked to the
struggle of creation and the attempt to exert mastery over nature.
Finally, humanism looked forward to a rebirth of a lost human spirit and wisdom.
In the course of striving to recover it, however, the humanists assisted in the
consolidation of a new spiritual and intellectual outlook and in the development of a
new body of knowledge.
From Italy the new humanist spirit and the Renaissance it engendered spread
north to all parts of Europe.
Humanism was a scholarly movement that began with the Intellectual ferment of
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the Renaissance. Humanistic tendencies shifted the stress from the life after death to the
life on earth. One must remember that Renaissance Europe is still Christian Europe,
which was founded on Medieval scholasticism. A true humanist however did not run
away from people, on the contrary, he had to try to learn about the world as much as he
could, and the purpose of his study would not be to know the mysteries of religion but
to develop as a human being.
This epoch emphasized the need for developing the literature in vernacular
languages and restored the status of Ancient literature and philosophy, which proved to
be a great inspiration for many writers. The classical world seemed to represent the
ideal civilization. Also, literatures of European countries turned from Latin to their
national languages, they evidenced a special interest in folklore.
An artist becomes a central figure of Renaissance which was an anthropocentric
movement by its nature. Artists’ aim was to show both the all aspects of human life and
their creative abilities. The central artistic principle of Renaissance was that of mimesis
– imitation of nature, of Roman and Greek art etc. in such a way artists aestheticize the
world around, nature, humans.

The Renaissance in England chronologically does not coincide with the

European one. In England it dates back to the 16 th century and was marked by an
intensive development. If in Italy and other countries The Renaissance took place within
several centuries (the end of 13th – beginning of 16th centuries), in England it took only
1 century from its offspring through the high day to its decay.

2. Sonnet as a leading poetic genre. Italian and English sonnet modes/canons.

The leading sister genre at the Renaissance age was poetry (drama was the
second one, epic literature (prose) – the third one). Renaissance poetry synthesized the
whole corpus of English literature that did not know any genres other than poetic ones.
Moreover, 16th century poetry reached a higher degree in its development. Besides,
there did not exist any preconditions to foreground prose fiction.
Poetry of the period turned back to Antiquity, imitating classical patterns.
One of the most popular forms, the sonnet, Italian sonnetto, is a fourteen line
poem, usually in iambic pentameter, with rhymes arranged according to certain definite
patterns. It normally expresses a single complete thought, idea or sentiment. Sonnets,
which the Elizabethans often called “quatorzains,” using the term “sonnet” loosely for
any short poem, are fourteen-line poems in iambic pentameter with elaborate rhyme
schemes.
There are three most widely recognized forms of the sonnet, each with its own
traditional rhyme scheme: 1. Italian or Petrarchan, 2. Spenserian and 3. the English or
Shakespearian sonnets.
Petrarch’s sonnets celebrating his ideal love to Laura provided English poets, as
well as a great many poets throughout Europe, with a conventional form for
conventional sentiments.
The rhyme scheme most frequently employed by Petrarch was the octave which
consists of two quatrains with a single pair of rhymes - abba abba and the sextet (sestet)
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consisting of two tercets with two or three rhymes: dcd, cde, cde, or a similar
combination that avoids the closing couplet (cdc cdc or cde cde)
Normally, in the octave and then in the sextet two aspects of the same idea were
expressed without strong emphasis at the end of the poem.
The so-called English sonnet, introduced by Surrey and practiced by Shakespeare,
is structurally three quatrains and a couplet: abab cdcd efef gg. Shakespearian sonnets
are considered superior to any other written in the Elizabethan period simply because
they have richer imagery, an unfolding dramatic situation, and explore the passion
balancing it all with a final resolving couplet.
The Spenserian sonnet, like the English sonnet, offered considerable relief to the
difficulty of rhyming English words and invited a division of thought into three
quatrains and a closing summarizing couplet. Spenser, the most experimental and the
most gifted prosodist of the century, preferred a form that is harder to write and richer in
rhymes: abab bcbc cdcd ее.
In the “The Book of the Sonnet” edited by Leigh Hunt and S. Adams Lee there is a
list of requirements sonnets should follow:
The sonnet, then, in order to be a perfect work of art, and no compromise with a
difficulty, must in the first place be a Legitimate Sonnet after the proper Italian fashion;
that is to say, with but two rhymes to the octave, and not more than three in the sestette.
Secondly, it must confine itself to one leading idea, thought, or feeling.
Thirdly, it must treat this one leading idea, thought, or feeling in such a manner as
to leave in the reader’s mind no sense of irrelevancy or insufficiency.
Fourthly, it must not have a speck of obscurity.
Fifthly, it must not have a forced rhyme.
Sixthly, it must not have a superfluous word.
Seventhly, it must not have a word too little; that is to say, an omission of a word
or words, for the sake of convenience.
Eighthly, it must not have a word out of its place.
Ninthly, it must have no very long word, or any other that tends to lessen the
number of accents, and so weaken the verse.
Tenthly, its rhymes must be properly varied and contrasted, and not beat upon the
same vowel,—a fault too common with very good sonnets. It must not say, for
instance, rhyme, tide, abide, crime; or play, gain, refrain, way; but contrast i with o, or
with some other strongly opposed vowel, and treat every vowel on the same principle.
Eleventhly, its music, throughout, must be as varied as it is suitable; more or less
strong, or sweet, according to the subject; but never weak or monotonous, unless
monotony itself be the effect intended.
Twelfthly, it must increase, or, at all events, not decline, in interest, to its close.
Lastly, the close must be equally impressive and unaffected; not epigrammatic,
unless where the subject warrants it, or where point of that kind is desirable; but simple,
conclusive, and satisfactory; strength being paramount, where such elevation is natural,
otherwise on a level with the serenity; flowing in calmness, or grand in the
manifestation of power withheld.
https://www.bartleby.com/341/1003.html
Olga Dolgusheva

3. English Renaissance poets: Th. Wyatt, H. Surrey, W. Raleigh, Ph. Sidney

and E. Spenser

English Renaissance poetry is presented by a string of authors including Thomas

Wyatt, Henry Surrey, Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare etc.
After Chaucer English literature did not witness any noticeable poetic practices.
The verse composing did not develop properly; even some of Jeoffrey Chaucer’s
achievements were lost. Chaucer wrote in continental accentual-syllabic metre as an
alternative to the alliterative Anglo-Saxon metre. Chaucer is known for metrical
innovation, inventing the rhyme royal, and he was one of the first English poets to use
the five-stress line, a decasyllabic cousin to the iambic pentametre, in his work, with
only a few anonymous short works using it before him.
The most complicated thing was to harmonize the rhythm with pronunciation
(due to the changes in the English phonology, great vowel shift etc.). Thus, to heighten
English poetry up to the new meter system was the major task of the 16 th century
English men of poetry.

This task was completed by Thomas Wyatt, Henry Surrey and their followers.
They adopted European meter and stanzas (quatrains, tercets etc.) onto English
versification. The way of poetic thinking in general underwent great changes. One of
the new features is connected with smoothing the contradictions. The poetic diction was
enriched with the notion/word WIT that denotes the work of mind, a word play, the
interplay between different meanings of one and the same word etc. A metaphor
becomes a central poetic device.

Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder (1503-1542)

It was Wyatt who introduced the sonnet into English. He took his subject matter
from Petrarch's sonnets, for the most part, but his rhyme schemes came from other
Italian models. The most common rhyme scheme in Wyatt's sonnets is abba abba cddc
ее; the usual Italian structure of an octave (first eight lines) followed after a turn in the
sense by a sestet (last six lines) was already beginning to break down into the “English"
structure for the sonnet, three quatrains and a couplet.
Wyatt was not primarily concerned with regularity of accent and smoothness of
the rhythm. Wyatt’s rather rough and vigorous metrical practice was felt to be crude.
The most noteworthy are thirty-six sonnets, the first in English. Ten of them were
translations from Petrarch, written in Petrarchan form with the couplet ending, which
Wyatt introduced.
Serious and reflective in tone, the sonnets show some stiffness of construction
and a metrical uncertainty indicative of the difficulty Wyatt found in the new form. Yet
their conciseness represents a great advance on the prolixity and uncouthness of much
earlier poetry. Wyatt was also responsible for the introduction of personal perspective
into English poetry, though following his models closely, he wrote of his own
experiences.
I find no peace, and all my war is done.
I fear and hope. I burn and freeze like ice.
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I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise;

And nought I have, and all the world I season.
That loseth nor locketh holdeth me in prison
And holdeth me not – yet can I scape no wise–
Nor letteth me live nor die at my device,
And yet of death it giveth me occasion.
Without eyen I see, and without tongue I plain.
I desire to perish, and yet I ask health.
I love another, and thus I hate myself.
I feed me in sorrow and laugh in all my pain;
Likewise displeaseth me both life and death,
And my delight is causer of this strife.
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-find-no-peace/

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547)

Surrey's importance and interest as a poet depend upon his continuing the practice
of the sonnet in English as instituted by Wyatt and establishing a form for it which was
used by Shakespeare and has become known as known as the “English” sonnet form:
three quatrains and a couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg (with seven rhymes instead of
five) . Surrey was a courtier poet, interested in circulating his poems in manuscript in
aristocratic court circles. He was the first English poet to publish in blank verse —
unrhymed iambic pentameter — a verse form that has so flourished in the succeeding
four centuries that it seems almost indigenous to the language.
His poetic diction is clear and consistent, and in many ways Surrey indicates the
direction in which the main stream of English verse will flow. Yet he often seems less
vivid and vigorous than Wyatt, and he perhaps takes the figurative language he uses less
seriously.
Many of the poems, in which love provides the theme, are indebted to Petrarch.
An example might be The soote season with its traditional imagery from the English
countryside, and Set me whereas where it is only mentioned in the final couplet to round
it up. He talks about the sufferings of love (Such waiwarde waies), the contest between
man and woman (Wrapt in my carelesse cloke and Grytt in my giltlesse gowne), and the
ages of man (Laid in my quyett bed).
Surrey, however, not always distanced himself in his poetry, but some of his
sonnets are very personal. In Syghes ar myfoode, there is the wisdom of experience
from seeing Wyatt in prison.

Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)

The greatest nondramatic poet of the English Renaissance, Edmund Spenser, was
born in London, probably in 1552, and attended the Merchant Taylors’ School under its
famous headmaster Richard Mulcaster. In 1569 he went to Cambridge as a “sizar” or
poor scholar. His Cambridge experience strongly colored the rest of his life; it was at
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the university that Spenser began as a poet by translating some poems.

He proceeded through the university, receiving the degree of B.A. in 1573 and
M.A. in 1576. He then entered upon a series of positions in the retinues of prominent
men. During his employment in Leicester’s household he came to know Sir Philip
Sidney and his friend Sir Edward Dyer, courtiers who were interested in promoting a
new English poetry. Spenser’s own contribution to the movement is The Shepheardes
Calender published in 1579 and dedicated to Sidney in the verses.
The Calender consists of twelve pastoral eclogues, one for each month of the
year. Each is prefaced by an illustrative woodcut representing the characters or theme of
the poem and picturing the appropriate sign of the zodiac for that month in the clouds
above. The eclogue was a classical form, practiced by Virgil and others; it presents,
usually in dialogue between shepherds, the moods and feelings and attitudes of the
simple life. But often the pastoral eclogue criticizes the world as it is by reflection from
the world as it might be, and in Spenser, as in other Renaissance poets, the eclogue at
times becomes didactic or satirical. Though it pretends to represent simple shepherds, it
is really commenting on contemporary affairs. The eclogues of the Calender are divided
into three groups— plaintive, recreative, and moral.
Spenser used a deliberately archaic language, partly out of homage to Chaucer.
But Spenser also used this language to get a rustic effect.
Spenser is sometimes called the “poet's poet" because so many later English poets
have learned the art of versification from him (Shelley, Keats, Tennyson).
Spenser’s works can be divided into three categories: minor verse, prose and the
Faerie Queene.
Spenser’s opus vitae (life’s work) is undoubtedly The Faerie Queene, a work
that appeared in installments.
Spenser is a complex genius who cannot be put into neatly labeled categories. He
is, for instance, strongly influenced by Renaissance Neoplatonism, but remains always
firmly grounded in earthiness and practicality. In The Faerie Queene he reaches toward
the highest ideals of the Renaissance but knows, at the same time, what it is to want to
remain an animal. He is a lover and celebrator of physical beauty, and he is sternly
moral. His “morality” is, however, not of the repressive sort; it arises from his
understanding of right action and of the temptations that entrap men as they try to
achieve such action. Spenser was strongly influenced by Puritanism in his early days; he
always remained a thoroughgoing Protestant. He is profoundly English and patriotic; in
him nationality and religion were joined.
Spenser’s poetry is always printed in the original spelling and punctuation, since
it was a deliberate choice on Spenser’s part that his language should seem antique.
Furthermore, Spenser uses his spelling to suggest rhymes to the eye, sometimes to
suggest etymologies, often incorrectly. An innovation was Spenser's nine-line stanza,
called after him the “Spenserian stanza”, which added to the eight-line stanza of iambic
pentameter (rhyming ababbcbc) an additional line of twelve syllables. This is the stanza
form which serves so well the large descriptive and narrative requirements of The
Faerie Queene.

Edmund Spenser’s famous collection of sonnets, Amoretti, is a series of love

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sonnets dedicated to Elizabeth Boyle, the lady of his dreams whom he pursues and
eventually marries in 1594. The term “amoretti” is literally defined as “little loves” or
“little cupids.” Spenser closely follows many conventions of the Elizabethan sonnets,
but in some ways his sonnets deviate from the norm for this era. For instance, many
Elizabethan sonnets call on the idea of the Muses, the mythological Greek goddesses
that provided inspiration for literature, science, and the arts. Spenser frequently
references the Muses in his sonnets.
Edmund Spenser’s sonnets follow the Spenserian sonnet form, which is a slight
variation of the English (Shakespearean) sonnet. The rhyme scheme for these poems is
abab bcbc cdcd ee. Spenser’s sonnets are similar to the Shakespearean sonnets:
Spenser’s poems are abundant in metaphors of nature. For instance, in Sonnet 1 he
compares his lover to a flower, by using words such as “lilly hands” and “leaves.”
Throughout the poems, he maintains metaphors of nature by writing about phenomena
such as the oceans and the stars.

Sonnet 1
Happy ye leaves when as those lilly hands,
Which hold my life in their dead doing might,
Shall handle you and hold in loves soft bands,
Lyke captives trembling at the victors sight.
And happy lines, on which with starry light,
Those lamping eyes will deigne sometimes to look
And reade the sorrowes of my dying spright,
Written with teares in harts close bleeding book.
And happy rymes bath’d in the sacred brooke
Of Helicon whence she derived is,
When ye behold that Angels blessed looke,
My soules long lacked foode, my heavens blis.
Leaves, lines, and rymes, seek her to please alone,
Whom if ye please, I care for other none.

The interlocking rhyme scheme of the Spenserian sonnet provides a more distinct
connectivity between the quatrains compared to the English sonnet. Whereas each
quatrain in Shakespeare’s sonnets is typically characterized by a unique metaphor or
idea that builds towards the couplet, the final two lines in the sonnets in Amoretti
typically tie together the contents of the first twelve lines in a reflective manner and
remind the reader of the overall theme of the poem.
Spenser’s sonnets deal largely with the idea of love. Up until Sonnet 67, the
sonnets primarily focus on the frustration of unreturned romantic desires. On the other
hand, the sonnets that follow Sonnet 67 celebrates the happiness of love shared between
two people (Spenser and Elizabeth), as well as celebrating divine love. The frustration
of unrequited love is a common theme in the Elizabethan sonnets; however, the
celebration of successful love is largely a deviation from the typical themes.
In addition, Spenser focuses on courtship and the power dynamic in successful
relationships. In particular, he portrays that women want to have the authority in a
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romantic relationship, he discusses true beauty and the ways in which writing poetry
can immortalize things that otherwise cannot be immortalized, such as people.
Finally, Spenser’s poetry often references God and religion, celebrating the theme
of divine love in the second half of the sequence.

Sonnet 75
One day I wrote her name upon the starnd,
But came the waves and washéd it away:
Agayne I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tyde, and made my paynes his pray.
“Vayne man”, said she, “that doest in vaine assay,
a mortall thing so to immortalize,
for I my selve shall lyke to this decay,
and eek my name bee wypéd out lykewize.”
“Not so,” quod I, “let baser things devize,”
To dy in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens wryte your glorous name.
Where whenas death shall all the world subdew,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.

4. The first English literary Apology for Poetry by Ph.Sidney. Ph. Sidney’s
poetic practices.

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) was the chief member of an elegant literary coterie
(an intimate and often exclusive group of persons with a unifying common interest or
purpose), and exercised an almost supreme influence on the others during his short life.
A major piece of critical prose was published after his death under the titles The
Defense of Poesy and An Apology for Poetry. In this long essay Sidney systematically
defends poetry (indeed all imaginative literature) against its attackers. He points out the
antiquity of poetry, and its prestige in the ancient world. He establishes its universality.
He cites the names given to poets by the Romans (vates or prophet) and the Greeks
(poietes or maker) to indicate their ancient dignity. But, he says, the real defense of the
poet depends not upon what he has been but upon what he does.
All arts depend upon works of nature, but the poet, supreme among artists, can
make another nature, new and more beautiful.
Moreover, the poet presents virtues and vices in a more lively and telling way
than nature does; his function is to teach and delight at the same time. He is superior to
the philosopher and the historian, because he is more concrete than the one and more
universal than the other. Sidney shows himself to be a thorough student of Aristotle
when he explains poetry as an art of imitation in which the artist imitates not merely
what is, but also what might be. He refutes the charge that poets are liars and maintains
that poetry does not abuse man's wits by arousing base desires but that man's wits about
poetry.
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His finest achievement was his connected sequence of 108 love sonnets, the
Astrophel and Stella (1591). In form Sidney usually adopts the Petrarchan octave
(abbaabba) with variations in the sextet tint) include the English final couplet.
Sidney's Astrophel and Stella (“Starlover and Star”) is the first of the great
Elizabethan sonnet cycles. These collections were based upon a well-understood
convention. The poet undertook to display all the contrary feelings of a lover—hope and
despair, tenderness and bitterness, exultation and modesty, by the use of “conceits” or
ingenious comparisons. Many of these became traditional, and eventually, stale: the
poet who complained that in love he both burned and froze, or that his sighs were the
winds driving his ship on a tossing sea, was echoing many an earlier poet. So Sidney
protests, in the role of Astrophel, that he uses no standard conventional phrases; his
verse is original and comes from the heart. (This pretense is also conventional.) But
what gives Sidney’s sonnets their extraordinary vigor and freshness is Sidney's ability to
dramatize. He uses dialogue, is often colloquial, and he heightens the situation as much
as he can within the fourteen lines.
Sidney in his poetry always strived for being clever and witty, the wit is supposed
to be based on irony.

Sonnet 1
Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,—
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,—
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe;
Studying inventions fine her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburn'd brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting invention's stay;
Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows;
And others' feet still seem'd but strangers in my way.
Thus great with child to speak and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write."

Sonnet 31
With how sad steps, Oh Moon, thou climb’st the skies!
How silently, and with how man a face!
What, may it be that even in heavenly place
That busy archer his sharp arrows tries?
Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel’st a lover’s case,
I read it in thy looks; thy languished grace,
To me, that feel the like, thy state descries.
Then, even of fellowship, Oh Moon, tell me,
Is constant love deemed there but want of wit?
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Are beauties there as proud as here they be?

Do they above love to be loved, and yet
Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?
Do they call virtue there ungratefulness?

6. Shakesperean sonnets
William Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence (154) was created for an indefinite period
of time. The collection was published in 1609. Unlike his predecessors, Spenser and
Sydney, Shakespearedid not dedicate his verses to a woman; instead, they are rather
ironic and dramatic.
Shakespeare’s cycle suggests a story, though the details are vague, and there is
doubt even whether the sonnets as published in 1609 are in the correct order. Certain
motifs are clear: a series celebrating the beauty of a young man and urging him to
marry; some sonnets to a lady; some sonnets (like 144) about a strange triangle of love
involving two men and a woman; sonnets on the destructive power of time and the
permanence of poetry; sonnets about a rival poet; and incidental sonnets of moral
insight, like 129 and 146.
The structure of the sonnet frequently reinforces the power of the metaphors; each
quatrain in 73 develops an image of lateness, of approaching extinction — of a season,
of a day, and of a fire, but they also apply to a life.
The three quatrains may be equally and successively at work preparing for the
conclusion in the couplet, or the first eight lines may contain a catalogue and the last six
turn in quite a different direction, as in sonnet 29.
The rhetorical strategy of the sonnets is also worth careful attention. Some begin
with a purported reminiscence; some are imperative; others make an almost proverbial
statement, then elaborate it. The imagery comes from a wide variety of sources:
gardening, navigation, law, farming, business, pictorial art, astrology, domestic affairs.
The moods are also not confined to what the Renaissance thought were those of the
despairing Petrarchan lover; they include delight, pride, melancholy, shame, disgust,
fear. It is evident that the poet of the sonnets is also the author of the great plays.
As a narrative, the sonnet sequence tells of strong attachment, of jealousy, of grief
at separation, of joy at being together and sharing beautiful experiences. The emphasis
on the importance of poetry as a way of eternizing human achievement and of creating a
lasting memory for the poet himself is appropriate to a friendship between a poet of
modest social station and a friend who is better-born.
Shakespeare’s sonnets in the majority of cases are rooted in the Renaissance
tradition. The poet demonstrates the unity of humans with nature and with real life. On
the one hand, he animates the nature; on the other one, a human is a part of nature and is
beautiful by him/herself.
Unique imagery and metaphors make the sequence peculiar. It also accords with
the renaissance poetics when a thought is to be expressed by means of a comparison,
simile, etc.
For ex., in Sonnet 44 the soul of a lyrical I is compared to fire and spirit; in sonnet
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145 – love is compared to a child; in sonnet 131 – rains are presented as travelers.
The final couplet of his sonnets as a rule suggests a generalization of a particular
concept or a philosophical issue.
Shakespeare’s sonnets are not homogeneous. In some of them the reader can
notice the features of the “tragic humanism” – a period of time that questions high
ideals and virtues of Renaissance. The humans and human societies are not perfect and
harmonic; they are full of vices (cruelty, hypocrisy, dishonesty, betrayal etc.). The
brightest example of such sonnets is Sonnet 66.

Sonnet 66
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honor shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly (doctorlike) controlling skill,
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill.
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that to die, I leave my love alone.

The author reveals social vices (disgrace, dishonesty, lies, meanness etc.); the
lyrical I comdemns all of them that makes him extremely displeased. The dramatic tone
is emphasized by the gradation of sharp phrases that are antinomies denoting social
mischiefs, by frequent use of allitartions, assonances, apahoric repetiotions and parallel
constructions.
Such view point agrees with the conceptual subject matter of Hamlet as well as of
the metaphysical poetry of the 17th century.

Література:

1. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: in 2 volumes. 4th edn. / ed.by M.H.Abrams. –
N.Y., L.: W.W.Norton & Co., 1979. Vol.1.
2. Английская и шотландская народная баллада. М.: Радуга, 1988.
3. A Literary History of England./ ed. by A.C.Baugh. L., Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1967. – Vol.1 (The Middle Ages).
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