Wells talks at some length (particularly on pgs 48-50) about many of Shakespeare’s poems being personal rather than for public consumption. “Many of the sonnets, including–indeed, especially–those that seem most revelatory of sexual infatuation and self-disgust, are private poems, personal and almost confessional in nature” (Wells 50). He also speaks on page 49 about how, if Shakespeare had been writing for a public audience, he would have published them himself, etc.<\/p>\n
I am drawn to one of his more famous sonnets, number 18, to somewhat question Wells on this point. “When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st; \/ So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, \/ So long lives this and this gives life to thee” (No. 18, 12-14). This is as blatant a statement as ever: to paraphrase, Shakespeare says, “as long as you are in my poem, you will live forever.” This does not sound like a man writing into a fire, it sounds like a man who expects his poetry to last. To me, this poem is a clear indication that Shakespeare was writing his work to be read not by one but by many. That this is one of the earliest in his collection is also significant, in that it shows his early recognition that his poetry would live on through the ages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wells talks at some length (particularly on pgs 48-50) about many of Shakespeare’s poems being personal rather than for public consumption. “Many of the sonnets, including–indeed, especially–those that seem most revelatory of sexual infatuation and self-disgust, are private poems, personal and almost confessional in nature” (Wells 50). He also speaks on page 49 about how, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":406,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-romancing-the-sonnet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/406"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}