Shakespeare at 450
The Bard at 450
The Bard is alive and with us at 450. The dawn of 2014 is special for that very reason, for the world shall sway to the strains of the Bard, and in celebrations all over where man exists and the word lives on, we shall relive his works a thousand times over. A mortal immortalized by his art of literature, ‘not of an age, but for all times.’ We shall begin the year of celebration of the Bard in this space by revisiting the Shakespearian Sonnets.
Jeet Thayil, the writer of Narcopolis and a performance poet, was here as a visiting professor at the Goa University, and the sessions with him on understanding, and reveling in sonnets shall guide me through my experiences with the writing of this article. The technique which I always disregarded in lieu of the theme of poems acquired a color of its own and lured me to assimilate sonnets in a completely new light. The better for the exercise on the writing of it; which you can accomplish with finesse, with the comprehension of the origin, types, and structure of sonnets. After meditation on the outline frame of the sonnet, you are astonished to discover the immense space within the confines, structured structure of a sonnet to experiment on flowing verse.
The Shakespearean Sonnet is a 14-line lyric poem consisting of 3 quatrains (3 stanzas of four lines each) of alternating rhyme and a couplet: a b a b c d c d e f e f g g . Each quatrain dwells on an idea, different from the other quatrains, but related to the overall theme of the sonnet. The couplet at the end resolves the juxtaposition of ideas, events, images in the quatrains, by possibly resolving or just revealing the tensions created and operative between them. Line 9, the beginning of the third quatrain, is the turn or volta which turns the preceding argument to a different image and then the culminating couplet settles the complete picture. Each line is of 10 syllables, with five feet, an iambic
The Bard is alive and with us at 450. The dawn of 2014 is special for that very reason, for the world shall sway to the strains of the Bard, and in celebrations all over where man exists and the word lives on, we shall relive his works a thousand times over. A mortal immortalized by his art of literature, ‘not of an age, but for all times.’ We shall begin the year of celebration of the Bard in this space by revisiting the Shakespearian Sonnets.
Jeet Thayil, the writer of Narcopolis and a performance poet, was here as a visiting professor at the Goa University, and the sessions with him on understanding, and reveling in sonnets shall guide me through my experiences with the writing of this article. The technique which I always disregarded in lieu of the theme of poems acquired a color of its own and lured me to assimilate sonnets in a completely new light. The better for the exercise on the writing of it; which you can accomplish with finesse, with the comprehension of the origin, types, and structure of sonnets. After meditation on the outline frame of the sonnet, you are astonished to discover the immense space within the confines, structured structure of a sonnet to experiment on flowing verse.
The Shakespearean Sonnet is a 14-line lyric poem consisting of 3 quatrains (3 stanzas of four lines each) of alternating rhyme and a couplet: a b a b c d c d e f e f g g . Each quatrain dwells on an idea, different from the other quatrains, but related to the overall theme of the sonnet. The couplet at the end resolves the juxtaposition of ideas, events, images in the quatrains, by possibly resolving or just revealing the tensions created and operative between them. Line 9, the beginning of the third quatrain, is the turn or volta which turns the preceding argument to a different image and then the culminating couplet settles the complete picture. Each line is of 10 syllables, with five feet, an iambic