Transcript William Shakespeare (put taken picture here)

William Shakespeare
His Famous Sonnets
Who is William Shakespeare?
The Globe Theater
www.oppidanlibrary.com/shakespeare.htm
www.unplowedground.com/.../travels/travels.html
Who is William Shakespeare?
Born in 1564 to John and Mary Arden
Shakespeare
 1582: Married to Anne
 1583: Birth of Daughter Susanna
 1585: Birth of twins: Judith and Hamnet
 1587-1592: Established in London as
actor/playwright; first work Comedy of

Errors
Who is William Shakespeare?
1593: Begins writing sonnets (until 1597-ish)
 1594-1596: Some more famous plays Romeo
and Juliet and Midsummer Night’s Dream
 1597-1608: Best known plays including the
rest of the tragedies
 1599: The Globe Theatre built
 1609: Publication of the Sonnets
 April 23, 1616: Shakespeare dies

A closer look...
Question of the Annes
Hathwey or Whately??
“Not many critics support this
hypothesis, but those that do use
it to portray Shakespeare as a
young man torn between the love
he felt for Anne Whateley and the
obligation he felt toward Anne
Hathwey and the child she was
carrying, which was surely his.”
His Works

Poetry
Sonnets
 The Rape of Lucrece
 The

Plays
 Tragedies:
Macbeth
Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet,
Much Ado About Nothing
 Histories: Richard III, Henry V
 Comedies:
What is a Sonnet?


14 lines
Iambic pentameter


5 feet
2 syllables each:


3 quatrains and a couplet


one unaccented, one accented
abab cdcd efef gg
First introduced into English Language by Sir
Thomas Wyatt in 1500s
Sonnet 18
(most famous)
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
Some Themes
The sonnets are stories about a handsome
boy, or rival poet, and the mysterious and
aloof "dark" lady they both love
 Sonnets 1-126:
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
Sonnets 127-152:
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Mostly addressed to or concern the other man
About “The Dark Lady” (hair, facial features,
character)
Sonnets 153 & 154:

Adaptations of famous classical Greek poems
The Dark Lady
Who is the dark lady?
No one knows!
Sonnet 126
O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
Dost hold Time's fickle glass, his sickle, hour;
Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st
Thy lovers withering as thy sweet self grow'st;
If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,
As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back,
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
May time disgrace and wretched minutes kill.
Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure!
She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure:
Her audit, though delay'd, answer'd must be,
And her quietus is to render thee.
Sonnet 130
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the
ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
Sonnet 154
The little Love-god lying once asleep
Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,
Whilst many nymphs that vow'd chaste life to
keep
Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand
The fairest votary took up that fire
Which many legions of true hearts had warm'd;
And so the general of hot desire
Was sleeping by a virgin hand disarm'd.
This brand she quenched in a cool well by,
Which from Love's fire took heat perpetual,
Growing a bath and healthful remedy
For men diseased; but I, my mistress' thrall,
Came there for cure, and this by that I prove,
Love's fire heats water, water cools not love.
Now...
Write your own love sonnet!
Remember the formula:
14 lines
Iambic pentameter
abab cdcd efefe gg