Reading Vendler’s article and then reading Shakespeare’s sonnets, I was struck by exactly how talented Shakespeare was as a sonnet poet. Now, yes this is blindingly obvious, but it comes with further justification. I had never fully appreciated that, as Vendler notes, “Shakespeare comes late in the sonnet tradition, and he is challenged by that very fact to a display of virtuosity, since he is competing against great predecessors” (Vendler 27). That Shakespeare came late in the sonnet tradition is something that I, if I am being honest, never knew. Because, growing up and reading Sonnets in English classes, you assume that the guy basically invented the form. That he was able to take the sonnet and have such an influence that, 400 years later, we are talking about him as the master, is really impressive. Impressive beyond the impressive nature of his poetry, and impressive beyond his list of achievements. It’s impressive because he, before he had first put pen to paper, had to mentally grapple with the fact that he was writing in a form that was 1) on its way out, and 2) already saturated with brilliant poets. I guess what I am saying in this post is that, putting his literary mastery aside, Shakespeare’s mentality is also something to be truly marveled at.
2 thoughts on “Shakespeare Was a Real Boss”
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I very much agree with you! It’s amazing how Shakespeare has taken this literary art form and has truly, and successfully, made it his own. I started appreciating it while reading his sonnets for our Feb 6th class. I started to notice how Shakespeare was beginning to distance his writing from his original point of procreation to more of a focus on what I assume are more of his own personal thoughts on love, death, heartbreak, etc. I really liked how personal it seemed to become and quite frankly it made me enjoy reading the sonnets more because now it felt as if it was literature that I could emotionally relate to and thus end up understanding and appreciating it more.
You make a very interesting point in your response: “…what I assume are more of his own personal thoughts.” I think you are correct in attributing the ideas of the sonnets to his personal thoughts. The first ten sonnets seem to be evidence of this. An entire string of sonnets deals with the issue of procreation, almost relentlessly. Had this not been something he had a firm opinion about, I doubt that he would have stuck to the theme for so long. Does this mean that everything he writes in a sonnet is closely connected to a belief he personally holds? I think the answer to that is no. I do think, though, that there are certain things that he writes about that can be attributed to his own thoughts, and I do think it is possible to identify those themes. The posts above — and others in this blog — begin to tackle the issue of various times in his life and what the sonnets capture from those moments. This, however, quickly becomes a difficult task. The sonnets were written over an extended period of time, and Shakespeare, like everyone else, likely changed significantly over this time. Pulling all of that together, it would be interesting to look at themes that appear throughout several sonnets in a row and attempt to connect them to that time in his life.