Critical appreciation on Shakespeare's

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Assignment no1

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Subject: “To his love” Sonnet no “cvi” 106

Object: Write a critical appreciation

Teacher: Mrs. Kaukab Tariq

Class: BA-1 (a)

Student: Madiha Idrees Motiwala

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616, English dramatist and poet, b. Stratford-on-Avon. He is considered the greatest playwright who ever lived. He is also a sonneteer.

 His father was John Shakespeare. In 1582 Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior and pregnant at the time of the marriage. They had three children: Susanna, born in 1583, and twins, Hamnet and Judith, born in 1585.

In 1594 Shakespeare became an actor and playwright for the Lord Chamberlain's Men, the company that later became the King's Men under James I. Until the end of his London career Shakespeare remained with the company; it is thought that as an actor he played old men's roles, such as the ghost in Hamlet and Old Adam in As You Like It. In 1596 he obtained a coat of arms, and by 1597 he was prosperous enough to buy New Place in Stratford, which later was the home of his retirement years. In 1599 he became a partner in the ownership of the Globe theatre, and in 1608 he was part owner of the Black friars theatre. Shakespeare retired and returned to Stratford c.1613. He undoubtedly enjoyed a comfortable living throughout his career and in retirement, although he was never a wealthy man.

Shakespeare's first published works were two narrative poems, Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594). Shakespeare's sonnets are by far his most important non-dramatic poetry. They were first published in 1609, although many of them had certainly been circulated privately before this, and it is generally agreed that the poems were written sometime in the 1590s. Scholars have long debated the order of the poems and the degree of autobiographical content. The first 126 of the 154 sonnets are addressed to a young man whose identity has long intrigued scholars. The publisher, Thomas Thorpe, wrote a dedication to the first edition in which he claimed that a person with the initials W. H. had inspired the sonnets. Some have thought these letters to be the transposed initials of Henry Wriothesley, 3d earl of Southampton, to whom Shakespeare dedicated Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece; or they are possibly the initials of William Herbert, 3d earl of Pembroke, whose connection with Shakespeare is more tenuous. The identity of the dark lady addressed in sonnets 127-152 has also been the object of much conjecture but no proof. The sonnets are marked by the recurring themes of beauty; youthful beauty ravaged by time, and the ability of love and art to transcend time and even death.

The word sonnet is derived from the Italian word “sonetto” which means a little song.

It is a poem of 14 lines divided into two parts. The first eight lines are called the Octave.

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The remaining six lines are called the Sestate. Each sonnet has its particular rhyme scheme. There are three forms that can be seen, they are:

  1. Petrarchan – abba, abba, cde, cde.
  2. Spenserian – abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee. This form is present from 1552-1599.
  3. Shakespearean – abab, cdcd, efef, gg. This form is present from 1564-1616.

The forms were brought to England by:

  1. Sir Thomas Wright (1503-1542)
  2. Henry Howard Earl of Surrey (1517-1547)
  3. William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Shakespearean sonnets are numbered in roman numbers; Paul Grave named them.

Most of his sonnets follow ...

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