what we're reading
Sidney (1554-1586) was a knight and an artist. He was killed in battle defending England from the Spanish and had a great report with the people. His sonnets come from one of the earliest sonnet sequences that we know of, a book called Astrophil and Stella (Star Lover and Star); you will notice that many of the poems are address to Stella. These explore the lover’s state of mind and soul, offering not merely a pretty or courtly depiction of love and romance as we’ve seen in literature up to this point. Notice, too, that many of his sonnets take different forms. He wrote before there was a set form for the sonnet and so is questioning form, art, and poet even as he writes about love.
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William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was born to a father with financially lucrative businesses (e.g., glovemaking, landowning, money-lending, etc.). He tended to write for performance and less for publication, as is evidenced by his plays. His sonnets (part of a sonnet sequence) are very interesting in their address, which changes a little more than midway. Critics tend to identify the first 126 sonnets as being address to a fair youth, a young male who is a student, lover, or both; there’s debate as to whether the sonnets suggest a sexual or platonic relationship. Thereafter, however, critics talk about the rest of the poems being directed toward the Dark Lady. These more explicitly take up themes involving heterosexual love and move away from questions of art, poetry, patronage, age, and time as the earlier ones dealth with.
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