Part two poetry william shakespeare

William Shakespeare (1594-1616) was the son of an English merchant and was born in the small English town of Stratford-on-Avon. At the age of twenty one he left Stratford for London. Soon Shakespeare found an opportunity of showing his ability as an actor and became a member of one of the chief acting companies of the day. He shortly afterwards began writing plays for the company and in a few years became famous and prosperous. Many of his plays were acted in London theatre called «The Globe».

Shakespeare's knowledge of stage, combined with his poetical genius and deep insight into the life and thoughts of his time, gave his plays a character of unsurpassed realism.

The wit and sayings of the English people, English folklore, London life and manners, all may be found in his plays «Romeo and Juliet», «Macbeth», Hamlet», «Othello», «King Lyre», «Richard III» and «Henry IV» as well as in his comedies «The Taming of the Shrew». «The Merry Wives of Windsor», «As You Like it» and others. His plays are continually staged and enjoyed by the public.

Shakespeare's lyrics and sonnets are also universally acknowledged to among the best in the world. His sonnets are suberb both in form and in content. Professor Galperin believed that «a great volume of emotional charge is always blended with rational elements. Only the genius of Shakespeare could display the enormous powers of human intellect in struggling with the devastating and devouring flame of passion. In this struggle the reasoning powers always take the upper hand. The emotions, violent though they may be, are unable to shatter the logical arrangement of the utterance. The form, bridled by the idea, grows into an additional source of communication and begins to fulfil its part»*.

*Galperin I.R. An Essay in Stylistic Analysis. Moscow, 1968, p. 17.

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

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.

A sonnet is a short poem or a stanza complete in itself. It consists of fourteen lines. It deals with a single emotion, sentiment or reflection, which is introduced in the first part. The first part of the sonnet is called the octave, the second - the sestet. The last two lines of the sestet present a conclusion drawn from the whole sonnet. These two lines are called the epigrammatic lines of the sonnet.

Discussion of the sonnet

1. Speak of the main talking point of the poem.

2. Into how many parts can the sonnet be divided? Define each part.

3. The poet believes that the human beauty is not subject to time. How is it accentuated?

4. Prove that the beauty of nature changes from season to season. Find the thematic group of words, epithets, repetition, intensifiers and the rhetorical question.

5. The mortality of the nature's beauty is contrasted to the immortality of the human beauty. How is this contrast brought home to the reader?

6. How is the idea of the immortality of the human beauty enforced? Pay attention to the forms of negation.

7. Speak of the role of archaic words and forms.

8. Comment on the conclusion drawn in the last two lines. Does it present a convergence of stylistic devices?

9. What notions that make the sonnet philosophical are described?

All the World's a Stage*

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard (1),

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the Cannon's mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,

With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide (2)

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness, and mere oblivion, -

Sans (3) teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

*Shakespeare W. All the World’s Stage: Poems to Enjoy. Москва, Просвещение, 1970, pp. 160-162.

Notes

(1) pard - leopard;

(2) a world too wide – yж очень широки;

(3) sans (ycm.) - без.

Understanding the poem

1. Shakespeare compares life with a stage. Make up the thematic group of words pertaining to acting.

2. Into how many parts can you divide the poem? Define each. Do they couple with each other? How?

3. Prove that the first part presents a sustained metaphor.

4. What means produce a generalizing effect?

5. The second part can be subdivided into seven parts. What means serve to establish close links between them?

6. Explain cases of irony.

7. Prove that the poem is based on coupling, anticlimax and convergence of stylistic devices.

SIEGFRIED SASSOON

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) was born in Branchley, Kent, and was educated in Cambridge. His first poems were highly romantic. When World War I broke out Sassoon immediately sided with the war patriots. He visited many of the battle fronts and soon was disillusioned. His poems of that period contain a passionate protest against war.

In the poem below Siegfried Sassoon showed his deep concern and compassion for poor invalids who were mutilated during the war.

Does It Matter?*

Does it matter? - losing your legs?..

For people will always be kind,

And you needn't show that you mind

When the others come in after hunting

To gobble their muffins and eggs.

Does it matter? - losing your sight?..

There's such splendid work for the blind;

And people will always be kind,

As you sit on the terrace remembering

And turning your face to the light.

Do they matter? -Those dreams from the pit?..

You can drink and forget and be glad,

And people won't say you're mad;

For they'll know you’ve fought for your country

And no one will worry a bit.

*Sassoon S. Does It Matter?: 1914-1918 in Poetry: An anthology selected and edited by E.L. Black. London, 1970, p. 104.

Discussion of the poem

1. Does the poem echo with the stories by Hemingway that we have analysed? If it does in what respect?

2. Speak of the role of the title and opening lines of each stanza. How is the reader kept in suspense and emotional tension? Note the suspension marks, speak of the implication they create.

3. In what way does the author brand war and sufferings it brings to people?

4. Is there any implication of the condemnation of those who profit by war enjoying life? How is it made obvious?

5. Can we judge of the attitude of healthy people to those mutilated in the war? With whom does the author's sympathy lie and how is it made clear?

6. Study the structure of the poem (structural and compositional coupling, contrast, defeated expectancy, suspense).

GERALD MANLEY HOPKINS*

Gerald Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) is now generally regarded as a modern poet, in spite of the period in which he wrote. This is partly because his work was not widely known during his life- time: he was a priest and felt that his calling prohibited from publishing his poetry. It was not until 30 years after his death, in 1918, that, his friend Robert Bridges published the first edition of his poems. The influence of his work, with its radical difference in sensibility and technique from the main poetry tradition of Victorian poetry, has been considerable. The building up of complex patterns of meaning though multiple suggestiveness given to words in their poetic contexts, is what so existed 20th-century poets. His metrical experiments, his breathless pace in which grammar was sacrificed for the sake of the rhythm have been widely imitated.

To Hopkins belongs a justification of the complexity of modern poetry. He was dismayed when R. Bridges found him unintelligible -but it was his aim, said Hopkins, to express, not to communicate: «I do not write for the public... No doubt my poetry errs on the side of singularity... indeed, I was not overdesirous that the meaning of all should be quite clear…» «If it is possible to express a subtle and recondite (1) thought on a subtle and recondite subject in a subtle and recondite way and with great felicity and perfection, in the end something must be sacrificed with so trying a task, in the process, and this may be the being at once, nay, perhaps even the being without an explanation at all, intelligible...»

G.M. Hopkins is thus in a sense a 20-century poet born out of his time who had to wait until the 20-century century for posthumous appreciation.

*Biography and questions are borrowed from Arnold I.V., Tarasova V.K. Modern Poetry. Leningrad, 1987, pp. 14-17.

(1) recondite - obscure to the ordinary understanding, connected with secrete knowledge.

Spring and Fall

To a young child

Margaret, you are grieving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leaves, like the things of man, you

With your fresh thought care for, can you?

Ah! as the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you will weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sorrow's springs are the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind expressed

"What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It is the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for...

Notes

Wanwood - pale woodland, sickly pallid, suggestive of great weariness.

Leafmeal - a word coined by Hopkins by analogy with «piecemeal» (piece by piece), i.e. having fallen to the ground leaf by leaf.

Blight –

1) a disease of plants that results in sudden dying of leaves;

2) anything that destroys, prevents growth, frustrates.

… care for, can you? - Hopkins tended to concentrate meaning by avoiding all unnecessary words that are required only as grammatical signs. The phrase is a contamination of two verbal constructions; care for, do you? and can care for, can you? Thus it both states the fact and points out the ability.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind expressed - neither mouth, nor mind had expressed. Hopkins is said to let his line be distorted by emotion. The unusual inversion creates the effect of spontaneous excited speech.

Discussion of the poem

1. What is the significance of the title and the subtitle? Comment on the interaction of polysemy and antonymy in the words «spring» and «fall». What are the related meanings in which they are opposed to each other?

2. Does «unleaving» suggest anything more than just losing leaves? How is the image implied in the morphological structure of this neologism?

3. Why and how is the childish perception of things contrasted to that of a mature person? For what reason does the poem imply the child may «yet» weep in later years? Is this later sorrow contrasted to the grief she feels now?

4. What emotional effect do the coined words «wanwood» and «leafmeal» have on you?

5. Explain lines 12 and 13. Comment on the syntactic and alliterative pattern of the lines.

6. What is «the blight man was born for»? Discuss the fruitful ambiguity of the word «blight». How has the poem established that Margaret is mourning for herself? Why is the child associated with leaves?

7. Note the rich liquid quality of the vowel rhymes. What lines strike discordant note by harsh rhymes?

ROBERT FROST*

Robert Frost (1875-1963) was born in San-Francisco, California. Yet most of his life he spent in New England, and descended from a long line of New Englanders who lived there since 1632 (1).

His father and mother had been teachers. His father died when Frost was ten. His mother brought her children back to New England to their paternal grandfather in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Here young Frost went to school. In school vacation days from twelve on he worked in shoe shops, in wooden mill and as a farm help. He married at twenty, went to Harvard University in his twenty-second year and left it within two years. After that he taught in country schools, edited a weekly paper and wrote poetry. His grandfather gave him a farm, and he made his living as a farmer for six years. Later he also taught part of the time.

In 1912 he sold his farm and moved his family to live in England. It was in England that this most American of poets was first recognized and published his first books: «A Boy's Will» and «North of Boston».

In 1915 he returned to America to find himself famous and highly praised by the critics who called him the leader of a new era in American poetry.

From this time on his star continued to rise. He was awarded honorary degrees of many universities. Four times he received the Pulitzer Prise for the best book of poetry of the year. He published a great number of collection of poems, many of them with titles showing his attachment to New England: «Mountains Interval» (1916), «New Hampshire» (1923), «A Further Range» (1936). Others reveal in their titles his deep love for nature: «West-Running Brook» (1928), «A Witness Tree» (1942), «In the Clearing» (1962) and others. Although engaged as a professor and lecturing a great deal, he did not sever his ties with land. He owned five farms, all in Vermont, and lived on them from time to time.

Frost's poetry is remarkable for its humane optimism, sincerity, wisdom and wit. The music of his poetry is that of a speaking voice. He writes from personal experience. His tone is conversational and also that of a man speaking to himself, thinking aloud, unaware of any audience. His vocabulary is simple: he rarely uses metaphors or allusions, and yet his poetry is rich in symbols, the imagery and the symbolic element being taken from everyday contact with nature. The significance is often implied. For example the first line of the famous poem «Mending Wall»: «Something there is that doesn't love a wall», may be taken for its face value, as part of the image, but at the same time it implies a protest against barriers between people. Frost's poems are rich in aphorisms. Many of them are placed in the strong position of a conclusion, whereas the first line introduces the image or a symbol. For example the poem entitled «Hyla Brook» (hyla is a kind of frog) begins: «By June our brook's can out of song and speed…» and ends as follows: «We love the things we love for what they are».

The approximation to ordinary speech makes his style, characteristic of a man of the first half of the twentieth century, sound simple enough. But at the same time because of understatement and implication it is also in a way sophisticated or as the poet himself puts it:

It takes all kinds of in- and outdoor schooling

To get adapted to my kind of fooling.

With the years his talent grew in clarity and wisdom, became seasoned in experience but no less emotional:

I would have written of me on my stone

I had a lover's quarrel with the world.

*Biography and questions are borrowed from Arnold I.V., Tarasova V.K. Modern Poetry. Leningrad, 1987, pp. 26-29.

The Pastures

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;

I'll only stop to rake the leaves away

(And watch the water clear, I may):

I shan't be gone long. - You come too...

I'm going out to fetch the little calf

That's standing by the mother. It's so young

It totters when she licks it with her tongue.

I shan't be gone long. - You come too...

Notes

Spring - a place where water comes up naturally from the ground.

Rake –

1) to clean or smooth with a rake;

2) a gardening tool consistingof a row of teeth at the end of a long handle.

Totter - to shake as though about to fall.

Discussion of the poem

1. Give your opinion on the possible motive why R. Frost included this poem as an introduction to the complete collection of his poetry. Who may the addressee be?

2. What is the general lyrical mood as revealed by the repetition of the lines of each stanza?

3. Point out the features typical of colloquial speech.

Stopping by Woods on

a Snowy Evening*

Whose woods these are I think I know

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

*Frost R. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening: Reader in Modern American Literature (1917-1941). Moscow: Higher School, pp. 257-258.

Discussion

1. Comment on the inverted word-order in the opening line of the poem which attracts the reader's attention to the owner of the forest. How is he described: directly or indirectly?

2. How is the beauty of the forest accentuated? Find means that imitate the sounds of the wind and snow.

3. Speak of the role of detachment and alliteration of the sound «d» in the last stanza.

4. Interpret the line «The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep». Comment on the contextual meaning of the word «promises».

5. Why is the phrase «And miles to go before I sleep» repeated? Does it serve to enhance the author's conclusion?

6. Pay attention to the compositional peculiarities of the poem, i.e. peculiar rhythm. Does it serve to link the stanzas with each other?

7. Study professor Galperin's commentary in the book «Учебник английского языка для первого курса», Mocквa, 1975, pp. 308-314.

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL TO BE USED FOR

INDEPENDENT ANALYSIS