Elizabethan literature

The sonnet

• The sonnet is the literary form most commonly associated with the 16th
century

• Influenced by Italian poets in the Middle Ages, the sonnets are usually love
poems - European literary forms

• An independent voice that expresses itself confidently – the imported form is

not experienced as a constraint

• Linguistic and national confidence, instead of writing in the shadow of

continental writers.

• A sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines, “in which its Petrarchan form divides into
an eight-line unit and a six-line unit; the octave develops one thought and there
is a change of direction in the sestet

• Why the sonnet was established as the favourit literary form: “"There is a
delight in control reflected in the idea of the poem's set form; life is complex,
and the pressure in life is diverse, but the poet has asserted an authority over
such complications" (p. 36).

• Most of the sonnets are love poems: in which a male poet addressing a female
subject; "he strives to bring her under his control. But the woman remains free
and alusive (hence the need to return to her in sonnet after sonnet)" (p. 46)

• The issue of control and the fragility of the authority - issue that connects to a
larger social and political questions.

• Central theme of sixteenth century English literature: “… there is a constant

assertion of control, of order, but that control is always being undermined,
challenged or doubted” (p. 37)

• The Renaissence - Learning and education: “the sonnet acknowledges a debt to

Italian culture and to the classics…”; “pattern of rational interpretation upon
life” (37)

• The dominant voice is that of a courtly aristocrat - courtly sophistication,

eliteness
 • The convention was introduced in England by Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of
Surrey in the early 16th century

Whoso List to Hunt – Thomas Wyatt

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, alas, I may no more;
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that furthest come behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow; I leave off therefore,
Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I, may spend his time in vain.
And graven with diamonds in letters plain,
There is written her fair neck round about,
'Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.'

Notes:
List – wish, desire
Whoso: archaic form of whoever
Hind: the female of the red deer
Alas: used to express unhappiness, pity, or concern
travail: work especially of a painful or laborious nature
hath: has
fleeth: flees
afore: before
leave off: cease, stop
Noli me tangere – according to Solinus, white stags were found 300 years after
Caesar's death, their collars inscribed with the command: Noli me tangere, Caesaris
sum – Do not touch me, I am Caesar's.
Source: Poem of the week: Whoso List to Hunt by Thomas Wyatt | Poetry | The
Guardian

• Whose list to hunt – the sense of life of an aristocrat – whose main leisure
activity is hunting

• “diamond-studded collar” – concern over good style rather than mere utility

• Political ambitious and sexual desire – pursue

• A sense of quarry – a woman or a secure post – that remains elusive

• hapless male lover and remote idealised lady

• Ambiguous resonance: playful and darkly sinister tone

• A court-based poem – the assertion of royal authority

Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella - a sonnet sequence containing 108 sonnets
and 11 songs that influenced other sonnets sequences.

Sonnet 21

Your words, my friend, right healthful caustics blame

My young mind marred, whom Love doth windlass so,
That mine own writings like bad servants show
My wits, quick in vain thoughts, in virtue lame;
That Plato I read for nought, but if he tame
Such doltish gyres; that to my birth I owe
Nobler desires, least else that friendly foe,
Great Expectation, were a train of shame.
For since mad March great promise made of me,
If now the May of my years much decline,
What can be hoped my harvest time will be?
Sure you say well, “Your wisdom’s golden mine,
Dig deep with learning’s spade.” Now tell me this,
Hath this world ought so fair as Stella is?

Glossary:

Marred – spoilt
Windlass – seize, ensnare, capture
wits – mental faculties
lame – cripple because of being injured
nought – nothing
tame – domesticate, subdue
doltish – stupid, foolish
gyre – spiral, turn
lest - for fear that
ought: archaic spelling of aught: anything

• Renaissance: valuing of a moral education that will prepare a young man for
public life; reference to the greek philosophy – reading of the classics and
acquisition of proficiency as a writer; a moral education.

• Use of metaphor and paradox:

“That mine own writings like bad servants show / My wits, quick in vain
thoughts, in virtue lame”
“right healthful caustics” (a corrosive cure)

• The elusive beloved woman and the necessity of bearing her under his (the
poet’s) control

• Authority and fragility (of the authority) – the ackonowledge of the precarious
nature of the control

Political and social context

• The Reformation – protest against the authority of the catholic church

 • Religious settlement of 1559

• An increasing sense of national confidence and independence

• Thomas More (1478-1535) ’s Utopia (1516): Italian Renaissance and

Humanism; prose written in Latin (influence of the Renaissance and political
conservatism); the book offers solution to the problems of European society,
through the metaphoric perfect island governed by reason;

• More’s contradiction: affiliation with the new trends brought by renaissance

and the holding of traditional values.

• Comparison:

Old English - "loyalty as key value in a corrupt and harsh world, with religion as the
only consolation"

Middle English:- religious as the source of morality and ideal behaviour,

ennoblement of "knights" who bear these values.

Sixteenth century literature, as in More's Utopia: "a positive sense of the human
intellect and of human capability"

• Translation of the Bible – a translation prior to the Reformation by William

Tyndale who was burned as a heretic; Henry VIII gave licence for an English
Bible in 1536; books being printed.

• Women who wrote sonnets, including Queen Elizabeth I (42-43) - written

after the 1569-70 Northern Rebellion in support of Mary Stuart over Queen
Elizabeth I

“… poetry was not merely a courtly pastime but a form charged with political
resonance” (p. 43)

The doubt of future foes - Queen Elizabeth I

The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy,

And wit me warns to shun such snares as threaten mine annoy;
For falsehood now doth flow, and subjects’ faith doth ebb,
Which should not be if reason ruled or wisdom weaved the web.
But clouds of joys untried do cloak aspiring minds,
Which turn to rain of late repent by changed course of winds.
The top of hope supposed the root upreared shall be,
And fruitless all their grafted guile, as shortly ye shall see.
The dazzled eyes with pride, which great ambition blinds,
Shall be unsealed by worthy wights whose foresight falsehood finds.
The daughter of debate that discord aye doth sow
Shall reap no gain where former rule still peace hath taught to know.
No foreign banished wight shall anchor in this port;
Our realm brooks not seditious sects, let them elsewhere resort.
My rusty sword through rest shall first his edge employ
To poll their tops that seek such change or gape for future joy.

Glossary:
doth - does
hath - has
ye - you (plural)
shun - avoid
snare - trap
ebb - decay
cloak - hind
repent - regret
upreared - lifted
grifted - enxertado
guile - cunning
wights - creatures
aye - yes, always
sow - plant
brook - tolerate
sect - religious faction
gape -wide open (mouth)
poll - cut
top - the head of a plant

Shakespeare’s sonnet

• "... Shakespeare is outside the established order of the court and more open to
an idea of flux and instability" (p. 46)

• Most of Shakespeare's sonnets are addressed to a man, which unsettles the

convention of a love poem
Read sonnet 64, p. 47

• The poetic persona is placed outside the normal span of life, "... imagining the
process of decay, of building razed to the ground, the ocean eating into the
shore, and state [...] decaying" (p. 47)

• The poem switches from lofty themes (falling into ruin) to the subject of his
love, stating his loss

• A sense of change in an increasingly commercial society

• The changing landscape