Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Materiali per uso didattico

Prof. D. Calimani

Il sonetto petrarchesco: Petrarca, Sonetto XXXV

Solo e pensoso i più deserti campivo mesurando a passi tardi e lenti,e gli occhi porto per fuggire intentiove vestigio uman l'arena stampi.

Altro schermo non trovo che mi scampidal manifesto accorger de le genti;perché ne gliatti d'alegrezza spentidi fuor si legge com'io dentro avampi:

sì ch'io mi credo omai che monti e piaggee fiumi e selve sappian di che tempresia la mia vita, ch'è celata altrui.

Ma pur sì aspre vie né sì selvaggecercar non so ch'Amore non venga sempreragionando con meco, et io co llui.

Petrarca e le traduzioni di Wyatt

Petrarca e le traduzioni di Wyatt

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

The golden gift that Nature did thee give To fasten friends and feed them at thy will With form and favour, taught me to believe How thou art made to show her greatest skill,

Whose hidden virtues are not so unknown But lively dooms might gather at the first: Where beauty so her perfect seed hath sown Of other graces follow needs there must.

Now certes, lady, since all this is true, That from above thy gifts are thus elect, Do not deface them then with fancies new, Nor change of minds let not thy mind infect,

But mercy him, thy friend, that doth thee serve, Who seeks alway thine honour to preserve.

‘Droeshout portrait ‘dal frontespizio del First Folio (1623)

‘Chandos Portrait’

Un teatro ai tempi di Shakespeare

Teatro elisabettiano

Il Globe ricostruito (1997)

Il tetto di paglia (thatched roof) del Globe

Il Globe, a cielo aperto

Il Globe

Palcoscenico del Globe

Palcoscenico del Globe

Palcoscenico del Globe

Il pubblico del Globe.

Il Globe circolare

Teatri nella Londra elisabettiana

Holbein il Giovane, Gli Ambasciatori (1533)

Gli ambasciatori, dettaglio

Velasquez, Las meninas (1656)

Pere Borrell del Caso, Escapando de la critica (1874)

John Donne, An Anatomy of the World, ‘The First Anniversary’

And new Philosophy calls all in doubt,The Element of fire is quite put out;The Sun is lost, and th'earth, and no man's witCan well direct him where to look for it.And freely men confess that this world's spent,When in the Planets, and the FirmamentThey seek so many new; they see that thisIs crumbl'd out again to his Atomies.'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone ;All just supply, and all relation:Prince, subject, Father, Son, are things forgot.

Erotismo shakespeariano

Venus:

"I'll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer;Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale:Graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry,Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie."

Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis, 231-4

L’immagine del maschio effeminato

Some swore he was a maid in man’s attire,For in his looks was all that men desire 84

Marlowe, Hero and Leander (1593) He burns with bashful shame, she with her tearsDoth quench the maiden burning of his cheeks 50………………He saith she is immodest, blames her mis[behaviour] 53

Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis (1593)  Small show of man was yet upon his chin 92 For maiden tongued he was 100 That he did in the general bosom reignOf young, of old, and sexes both enchanted 128

Shakespeare, A Lover’s Complaint (1609)

Amore efebico

The god* put Helle's bracelet on his arm, *NeptuneAnd swore the sea should never do him harm.He clapped his plump cheeks, with his tresses playedAnd, smiling wantonly, his love bewrayed*. *revealedHe watched his arms and, as they opened wideAt every stroke, betwixt them would he slideAnd steal a kiss, and then run out and dance,And, as he turned, cast many a lustful glance,And threw him gaudy toys to please his eye,And dive into the water, and there pry* *cercavaUpon his breast, his thighs, and every limb,And up again, and close beside him swim,And talk of love.Leander made reply,"You are deceived; I am no woman, I."Thereat smiled Neptune, and then told a tale,How that a shepherd, sitting in a vale,Played with a boy so fair and kind,As for his love both earth and heaven pined;

Marlowe, Hero and Leander (663-80)

Marlowe, Hero and Leander (1593) : riassunto

(Adattato da Wikipedia)  

Hero and Leander live in cities on opposite sides of the Hellespont. Hero is a priestess or devotee of Venus (goddess of love and beauty) in Sestos, who lives in chastity despite being devoted to the goddess of love. At a festival in honor of her deity, Venus and Adonis, she is seen by Leander, a youth from Abydos on the opposite side of the Hellespont. Leander falls in love with her, and she reciprocates, although cautiously, as her parents will not allow her to marry a foreigner.

Leander convinces her to abandon her fears. Hero lives in a high tower overlooking the water; he asks her to light a lamp in her window, and he promises to swim the Hellespont each night to be with her. She complies. On his first night's swim, Leander is spotted by Neptune (Roman god of the sea), who confuses him with Ganymede and carries him to the bottom of the ocean. Discovering his mistake, the god returns him to shore with a bracelet supposed to keep him safe from drowning. Leander emerges from the Hellespont, finds Hero's tower knocks on the door, which Hero then opens to find him standing stark naked. She lets him "whisper in her ear, / Flatter, entreat, promise, protest, and swear," and after a series of coy, half-hearted attempts to "defend the fort" she yields to bliss. The poem breaks off as dawn is breaking.

In view of Marlowe's generally free way with his sources and the detail of the bracelet, it seems possible that he might have changed the ending had he completed the poem, or even that the poem was itself complete as it stood. However, several hints in the lines of the poem that Marlowe did complete suggest that he would have ended the story in the traditional way, with Leander drowning and Hero committing suicide.

Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis (1593): riassunto

(Adattato da Wikipedia)

Venus 'sick-thoughted' with love, and hoists Adonis from the saddle of his horse. She then plies him with kisses, and arguments, but nothing she does or says can rouse him to sexual desire. This he repudiates. By the mid-point of the poem, Adonis has announced his intention to go boar hunting the next morning. Venus tries to dissuade him, and get him to hunt more timid prey. This he ignores, and breaks away from her. She spends the rest of the night in lamentation, at dawn, she hears the sound of the hunt. Full of apprehension, she runs towards the noise, knowing that, as the sound comes from just one place, the hunters are confronting an animal that isn't running away. She comes upon the body of Adonis, fatally gored by the boar's tusks. In her horror and sorrow, the Goddess of Love pronounces a curse upon love: that it will always end badly, and those who love best (like her) will know most sorrow. This curse provides an aetiology, a myth of causation, explaining why love is inseparable from pain (this is characteristic of the form).

Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece (1594): riassunto

(Adattato da Wikipedia)

Lucrece draws on the story described in both Ovid's Fasti and Livy's history of Rome. In 509 BC, Sextus Tarquinius (Tarquinio Sestio), son of Tarquin (‘il superbo’), the king of Rome, raped Lucretia (Lucrece), wife of Collatinus, one of the king's aristocratic retainers. As a result, Lucrece committed suicide. Her body was paraded in the Roman Forum by the king's nephew. This incited a full-scale revolt against the Tarquins, lead by Lucius Junius Brutus, the banishment of the royal family, and the founding of the Roman republic.

Shakespeare, A Lover’s Complaint (1609): riassunto

(Adattato da Wikipedia)

The speaker, an old shepherd, sees a young woman weeping at the edge of a river, into which she throws torn-up letters, rings, and other tokens of love. An old man asks the reason for her sorrow, and she responds by telling him of a former lover who pursued, seduced, and finally abandoned her. She concludes her story by conceding that she would fall for the young man's false charms again.

Dedica dei Sonetti (1609)

Per un’analisi del testo poetico: testo e spazialità

Si sta comed’autunnosugli alberile foglie.

Arcaismi elisabettiani

thou (you, II pers. sing., sogg.)– “But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes”thee (you, II pers. sing., ogg.-compl. ind.)- “Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee”thy (agg. poss.) – “When forty Winters shall besiege thy brow”thine (pron. poss.) – “Whose influence is thine, and born of thee”

(ma anche: “Thine eyes I love, and they as pitying me”) -’st (= II pers. sing) – “Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly”-eth (= -es, III pers. sing.) – “That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows” dost (= do, II pers. sing.) – “How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame”doth (= does) – “Thou art the grave where buried love doth live”didst (did, II pers. passato)- “Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day” art (= are) – “Be wise as thou art cruel”wert (= were, II pers. sing, pass.) – “And for a woman wert thou first created”

Sonetti 135-136

Bawdy in Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet Juliet:

“Give me my Romeo; and, when I shall die” (III.ii.21) Mercutio: O, Romeo, that she were, O that she were An open et cetera, thou a pop'rin* pear! (II.i.37-40)

*[Poperinghe –nelle Fiandre; ‘pop-her-in’ – entrare da lei]

Dowland (1563-1626), Come Again

Dowland, Come Heavy Sleep

Come heavy sleep, the image of true death;

and close up these my weary weeping eies:

Whose spring of tears doth stop my vitall breath,

and tears my hart with sorrows sigh swoln cries:

Come and possess my tired thoughts, worne soule,

That living dies, till thou on me be stoule.

Come shadow of my end, and shape of rest,

Allied to death, child to his blackfac’d night:

Come thou and charm these rebels in my breast,

Whose waking fancies doe my mind affright.

O come sweet sleepe; come, or I die for ever:

Come ere my last sleep comes, or come never.