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Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries & Replies From Everyone Else 4.2.97: Top | Help
I really, really disagree with the idea that Shakespeare's
sonnets are, as you've said,
"without artiface
of any kind 'constructed' in, over or around them.
They are bare
things, the kind of things you'd find in the personal journal of
an incredibly good writer."I agree with your point about the framing, or course, but
I think that many of the sonnets are more elaborately
artificial - in their fascination with wordplay, in their
reversal of conventions etc - than anything written by
these other sonneteers. This is what you'd expect from
a writer so adept at and fascinated with the resources of
convention (renaissance writers put less stock in direct
authenticity than we do - that's why Shakespeare borrowed so
many of his plays, why Hamlet is among other things an
interrogation of the kinds of revenge plots written by
his contemporaries, and so on). So my sense is that
Shakespeare is
every bit as interested in the formal conventions of sonnets
as the other writers I've mentioned, regardless of frame.
Posted by Cloten on April 12, 1997 at 09:35:46
In Reply to "Sh's sonnets are different" posted by Bill Routhier on April 12, 1997 at 08:07:48
Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries & Replies From Everyone Else 4.2.97: Top | Help