Examine Critically the Growth and Development of the Elizabethan Sonnets. Or Elizabethan Sonnet-Sequences.
Examine Critically the Growth and Development of the Elizabethan Sonnets.
The period from Chaucer
to Wyatt in poetry, if not absolutely barren, had reached a state of
stagnation. The best poetical works we have are the verse-satires of John
Skelton. With the Renaissance the attempt to mend the discrepancies of the
period starts along with the revival of the spirit of lyricism. The
introduction of the sonnet heralds both these changes. For, the sonnet in its
origin is essentially the lyrical expression of the personal emotions. English
men generally condemned Italy out of the keen national feelings. But they were,
at the same time, fascinated by the brilliant efflorescence of Italian sonnet
and lyrical poetry. It is typical of the age that English men should want to
transplant the sonnet into England and further turn it into a national form of
poetry.
Sir Thomas Wyatt is the
first person who is credited with the introduction of the sonnet in England.
Wyatt had to face many obstacles inherent in the use of the new form. The
language itself had become stagnant and lacked sufficient sonnet. For a sonnet,
being limited by fourteen lines be the very paragon precision. Nevertheless,
Wyatt apart from the couplet-ending he introduced, carefully imitated the form
and matter of the Petrarchan sonnet. His thirty-one love sonnets, along with
other love poems, were published posthumously in 1557 in Tottel’s
Miscellany which also contained the sonnets written by his friend Henry
Howard, Earl of Surrey. In Wyatt’s sonnets the fire of love burned with a glow,
and we hear for the first time the fervent voice of the poet’s heart: “The
pillar perished is where to I learnt / The strongest stay of mine unquiet
mind”.
Surrey, however, is
seen rather as a disciple of Wyatt than an independent force. Yet his sonnets
are artistically more effective than those of Wyatt, for he wrote with greater
ease and assurance. Whereas Wyatt mostly adhered to the Petrarchan form, Surrey
invented a new form--- three quatrains and an ending couplet, which Shakespeare
later on used with ease and grace. Surrey’s sonnets, addressed to Geraldine or
Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald, have a tenderness and grace, occasional flights of
lyrical melody and sincere sentiment which are absent from Wyatt’s. Indeed,
what had been Herculean task for Wyatt---synthesizing the precise subtlety of
form and convincing passion, became easier and more natural for Surrey who
achieved greater artistic maturity in that direction.
The gentle effusion of
the Tottel’s poets, however, set no fashion in sonnet writing. The great
Elizabethan revival of the sonnet came about in 1580. It was Sir Philip Sidney
who resuscitated the dying form of the sonnet and started the vogue of
Elizabethan sonnet sequence with his Astrophel and Stella.
Stella, like Petrarch’s Laura, was really Penelope Devereux, wife of Lord Rich,
loved by Sidney who is Astrophel. Stella is no idealized through sheer mystic
or spiritual exaltation as Laura in Petrarch. Both these two kids of love are
set against a human background, turbid and problematic from which they are
never abstracted. As poetry Sidney’s sonnet mark an epoch, for they are the
first direct expression in English poetry of an inmate and personal experience,
struck off in the white heat of passion. “Look into thy heart and write” was
his inspiration and motto, and though his sonnets are coloured at times with
the over-fantastic imagery which is at once a characteristic fault and
excellence of the writings of the time, they are all an effusion of real
passion.
In no other form of poetry
do we find so much of the typical Elizabethan tendency of mixing originality
with convention. Almost all the poets of the Elizabethan age attempted sonnets,
but the diversity of inspiration and imagination is re-shown in the thousand
shades and tones in which the great emotion of love appears in the sonnets. It
was the example of Sidney that inspired Spenser to write his sonnet-sequence Amoretti
giving up his preference for allegory. Here Spenser unfolds the story of his
wooing of Elizabeth Boyle, his initial frustration and final success so
exquisitely celebrated in Epithalamion. We may not find here much
of the throbbing passion of an unquiet Sidney or a complaining Shakespeare. But
there is a beautiful serenity and Platonic spirituality of tone coupled with
simple charm and tender feeling as in: “One day I wrote her name upon the
strand/ But came the waves and washed it away”. Spenser is not reticent in
extolling his mistress’ beauty in all sensuous details and colour. And yet
there is a purity of sense which is quite unique in the history of Elizabethan
sonnet.
But the greatest name
in Elizabethan sonnet is also the greatest name in the Elizabethan
drama—William Shakespeare. Of all the sonnet-sequences Shakespeare’s is the
least typical. It celebrates not the idealized love of an idealized mistress in
the Petrarchan tradition but masculine friendship--- a theme so dear to the
Renaissance mind fed on Plato. Much bitterness and despair permeate his
sonnets, some 154 in number, and the intensity of emotion is set against a
background of morality, causing exaltation and anguish in turns. Shakespeare
lends his verses a rare glow of glow of lyrical melody and meditation,
especially in sonnets like When to the Sessions of Sweet Silent Thought,
That Time of Year Thou May’st in Me Behold. In the rare beauty of their
rich and sensuous imagery, astonishing verbal complexities, many splendored
style and perfection of versification Shakespeare’s sonnet reveal a degree of
poetic maturity which none of his contemporary sonneteers equaled. Only the
best sonnets of Milton attained to the supreme beauty of the best of
Shakespeare, though they differed in their themes and effects.
The sonnet was the
fashion of the day and as such was apt to be spoiled by the artificiality of
mediocre writers. Henry Constable with his Diana and Samuel Daniel
with his Delia responded to the sonneteering craze of the day.
Michael Drayton was too much under the influence of Ronsard and Desportes, and
yet in his sonnet-sequence Ideas Mirrour, he reached the highest
level of poetic feeling and expression. The other sonneteers of the day were
translator or poor imitator of Petrarch and Ronsard. Barnfield’s Sonnet
to Cynthia, Barne’s Parthenophil and Parthenophe,
Fletcher’s Lycia, Percy’s Coelia are all poor in
stuff and imitative in character.
The harvest of Elizabethan
sonneteering is a strange medley of splendour and dullness. Sidney, Spenser and
Shakespeare, in varying degrees, invested this poetic form with unquestionable
beauty. Shakespeare above all breathed into the sonnet a lyrical melody and
meditative energy which no writer has surpassed. Few in the crowded rank and
file of Elizabethan sonneteers reached high level of poetic performance. Fewer,
still were capable of sustained flight in the loftiest region of poetry. But
yet Elizabethan sonnets would be looked up as a whole as a magnificently
successful attempt towards impassioned lyricism of matter combined with
artistic subtlety and discipline of form.
****
Comton Mullick (M.A in English, C.U) (B.Ed, RKMSM)
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