PICTURE OF THE FAIR YOUTH IN SHAKESPEARES SONNETS

ABSTRACT

My servey mentions about the character named Fair Youth in Shakespeares sonnets. The Fair Youth is an unnamed young man with outstanding physical and intellectual attributes, to whom sonnet 1-126 are addressed.The young man is written in romantic and loving language to express the authors love for him. Thereby, I want to clarify whether sonnets are Shakespeares autobiography or not. Keyword: Sonnets, Fair Youth, Shakespeare s autobiography. OUTLINE
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Introduction Literature review Period Story background Social and literature context Author Life Works Comments

1.1. 1.2. 2. 2.1. 2.2. 2.3. 3. III. IV. 1. 2.

The work Findings Recommendation and conclusion Recommendation Conclusion

References
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I/ Introduction : Benjamin Jonson, English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor said that Shakespeare was not of an age, but for all time. William Shakespeare has become an important landmark in English literature. He is considered one of the greatest writers of all time. Shakespeares sonnets are 154 poems in sonnet form, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. Making up the largest portion of the Sonnets are those dedicated to a young man known as the Fair Youth, who Shakespeare had a crush on, wanted but couldnt have. Choosing the subject Picture of the Fair Youth in Shakespeares sonnets, I want to use methods of analysis, synthesis based on theoretical study of poetics to show the beauty of the Fair Youth in particular and Shakespeares emotional mind in general. II/ Literature review
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The Renaissance period Historial background :

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The English Renaissance saw the emergence of the English sonnet as it flourished through poets of such as Shakespeare, Spenser, and Wyatt. The word sonnet comes from the Italian word sonetto, meaning "a little song." The sonnet style of poetry has certain characteristics that contrast other styles of poetry. The history of the sonnet style can be traced back to the 13th century. It was invented by poets who used this highly structured poetic style to explore their feelings about love and mortality.
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Social and historical context : Social context:

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The Sonnets were written during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England. It was an exciting time of growth and prosperity for the country. Elizabeth was the daughter of King Henry VIII (1491- 1547) and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Henry had six wives over the course of his lifetime, forcing him to separate England from the Roman Catholic church in order to follow his desire to divorce freely.
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Literature context :

Sir Philip Sidney's sequence Astrophel and Stella (1591) that started the English vogue for sonnet sequences: the next two decades saw sonnet sequences by William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel, Fulke Greville, William Drummond of Hawthornden, and many others. These sonnets were all essentially inspired by the Petrarchan tradition, and generally treat of the poet's love for some woman; with the exception of Shakespeare's sequence. The form is often named after Shakespeare, not because he was the first to write in this form but because he became its most famous practitioner. The form consists of fourteen lines structured as three quatrains and a couplet. The third quatrain generally introduces an unexpected sharp thematic or imagistic "turn"; the volta. In Shakespeare's sonnets, however, the volta usually comes in the couplet, and usually summarizes the theme of the poem or introduces a fresh new look at the theme. With only a rare exception, the meter is iambic pentameter, although there is some accepted metrical flexibility (e.g., lines ending with an extra-syllable feminine rhyme, or a trochaic foot rather than an iamb, particularly at the beginning of a line). The usual rhyme scheme is end-rhymed ab-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g. In the 17th century, the sonnet was adapted to other purposes, with John Donne and George Herbert writing religious sonnets, and John Milton using the sonnet as a general meditative poem. Both the Shakespearean and Petrarchan rhyme schemes were popular throughout this period, as well as many variants. 2. Author William Shakespeare 2.1. Life:

The most influential writer in all of English literature, William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564 to a successful middle-class glove marker in the small town of Stratford - upon - Avon, about seventy - five miles from London. Shakespeare attended Stratford Grammar school, but his formal education proceeded no further. In 1582, he married an older woman named Anna Hathaway, and had three children with her. Around 1590, he left his family behind and travelled to London to work as an actor and a playwright. Public and critical success quickly followed, and Shakespeare eventually became the most popular playwright in England and part-owner of the Globe theatre. Wealthy and renowned, Shakespeare retired to Stratford and died in 1616 and was buried there at the age of fifty-two. 2.2. Works : 2.2.1. Plays : Most playwrights of the period typically collaborated with others at some point, and critics agree that Shakespeare did the same, mostly early and late in his career. Some attributions, such as Titus Andronicus and the early history plays, remain controversial, while The Two Noble Kinsmen and The lost Cardenio have well-attested contemporary documentation. Textual evidence also supports the view that several of the plays were revised by other writers after their original composition. The first recorded works of Shakespeare are Richard III and the three parts of Henry VI, written in the early 1590s during a vogue for historical drama. Shakespeare's plays are difficult to date, however, and studies of the texts suggest that Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew and The Two Gentlemen of Verona may also belong to Shakespeares earliest period. 2.2.2.Poems: In 1593 and 1594, when the theatres were closed because of plague, Shakespeare published two narrative poems on erotic themes, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. He dedicated them to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. In Venus and Adonis, an innocent Adonis rejects the sexual advances of Venus; while
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in The Rape of Lucrece, the virtuous wife Lucrece is raped by the lustful Tarquin. Influenced by Ovid's Metamorphoses, the poems show the guilt and moral confusion that result from uncontrolled lust. Both proved popular and were often reprinted during Shakespeare's lifetime. A third narrative poem, A Lover's Complaint, in which a young woman laments her seduction by a persuasive suitor, was printed in the first edition of the Sonnets in 1609. Most scholars now accept that Shakespeare wrote A Lover's Complaint. Critics consider that its fine qualities are marred by leaden effects. The Phoenix and the Turtle, printed in Robert Chester's 1601 Love's Martyr, mourns the deaths of the legendary phoenix and his lover, the faithful turtle dove. In 1599, two early drafts of sonnets 138 and 144 appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim, published under Shakespeare's name but without his permission. 2.3. Comments : Shakespeare was not revered in his lifetime, but he received his share of praise. In 1598, the cleric and author Francis Meres singled him out from a group of English writers as "the most excellent" in both comedy and tragedy. And the authors of the Parnassus plays at St John's College, Cambridge, numbered him with Chaucer, Gower and Spenser. In the First Folio, Ben Jonson called Shakespeare the "Soul of the age, the applause, delight, the wonder of our stage", though he had remarked elsewhere that "Shakespeare wanted art". Between the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the end of the 17th century, classical ideas were in vogue. As a result, critics of the time mostly rated Shakespeare below John Fletcher and Ben Jonson. Thomas Rymer, for example, condemned Shakespeare for mixing the comic with the tragic. Nevertheless, poet and critic John Dryden rated Shakespeare highly, saying of Jonson, "I admire him, but I love Shakespeare". By 1800, he was firmly enshrined as the national poet. In the 18th and 19th centuries, his reputation also spread abroad. Among those who championed him were the writers Voltaire, Goethe, Stendhal and Victor Hugo. During the Romantic era, Shakespeare was praised by the poet and literary philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge; and the critic August Wilhelm Schlegel translated his plays in the spirit of German Romanticism.
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3. The work Sonnets : Shakespeare's sonnets are 154 poems in sonnets form written by William Shakespeare dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. All but two of the poems were first published in a 1609 quarto entitled SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS.: Never before imprinted. Sonnets 138 and 144 had previously been published in a 1599 miscellany entitled The Passionate Pilgrim. At the beginning of the book is a strange dedication to someone Mr. W.H. who has stayed a mistery for scholars. Some scholars of the sonnets refer to these characters as the Fair Youth(1-124), the Rival Poet(78-86), and the Dark Lady(125-152), and claim that the speaker expresses admiration for the Fair Youth's beauty, and later has an affair with the Dark Lady. III/ Findings : The Fair Youth is an unnamed young man to whom sonnets 1-126 are addressed. The poet writes of the young man in romantic and loving language, a fact which has led several commentators to suggest a homosexual relationship between them, while others read it as platonic love, or even as the love of a father for his son. Though the name of this young man is not mentioned, there is a view of the mental and physical picture of him. Physically superb, radiantly youthful, politically ascendant, socially powerful, the Fair Youth represents nearly everything that Shakespeare's culture valued in external life accomplishments and courtly character. To highlight this idealization ,the fair youth's perceived virtues are explicitly contrasted with the poet's "too sullied" and demeaning real world existence. This idealization treats lightly the youth's fundamental flaw, his selfishness in refusing to wed and procreate. However, this initial idealization makes horrific the poet's gradual recognition and then public denunciation of the youth's vicious, shallow and selfish character. The poet's ideals become a pathetic illusion, and the poems describe a pervasive spiritual strangulation that goes far beyond amorous disappointment. It is this existential exhaustion that the poet struggles to overcome. The sensual betrayal of the "dark lady" counterpoints the spiritual betrayal by the young man.
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With the woman whose historical identity is unknown, the poet's "betrayal" is inward and visceral, as his lust turns into an addict's remorse. In the opening 17 sonnets the friend is portrayed as a handsome young man who is very reluctant to get wed. In the opening sonnet the friend ,who contracted to thine own bright eyes and is interested only in his own selfish desires emerges as the embodiment of narcissism, a destructively excessive love of oneself. The poet makes clear that the Fair Youth's self-love is unhealthy, not only for himself but for the entire world. From the Sonnet 7 we see that the friends youthful condition is compared with the sun's highest point in the sky,which resembles "strong youth in his middle age." However, after the sun reaches it apex, its only direction is down. This downward movement represents "feeble age" in the youth, and what is worse than mere physical appearance is that the people who looked in awe at the youth's beauty will "look another way" when he has become old. In death, he will not be remembered. As usual, the poet argues that the only way for the youth to ensure that he is remembered after he dies is to have a child, making it clear that this child should be a son. The sonnets open in a public, ceremonial tone. They graciously entreat a noble and beautiful young man to sire a child who will preserve his physical virtues after he is old or dead. Most of the important themes or key images in the sonnet cycle are first expressed here in stylized terms: beauty's passing, the human desire to preserve beauty against time and decay, the deferential relationship between the fair youth and the poet who speaks the sonnets, the connections among people that the desire to preserve beauty motivates, the power of verse to persuade and memorialize, and the narcissism and selfishness that underlies the youth's indifference to the poet's requests. The sonnets from 18 to 25 we find another picture of the youth. This time the poet is obsessessed with the physical charms of the young man. In the sonnet 18, for example, the speaker says :

Shall I compare thee to a summers day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Thus the speaker here has glorified the physical charms of the young man,whose beauty far surpasses summer's delights. The poet's use of extremes in the phrases "more lovely," "all too short," and "too hot" (sonnet 20) emphasizes the young man's beauty. In this crucial, sensual sonnet, the young man becomes the "master-mistress" of the poet's passion: A womans face with natures own hand painted Hast thou the master mistress of my passion. Sonnet 20. As a man with the beauty of a woman, the youth is designed to be partnered with women but attracts men as well, being unsurpassed in looks and more faithful than any woman. Although to the poet he possesses a woman's gentleness and charm, the youth bears the genitalia ("one thing") of a man, and despite having a woman's physical attractiveness, the young man has none of a woman's fickle and flirtatious character. However, from the sonnet 25 onwards we find another picture of the friend. Here the self-centred nature of the young man is clearly portrayed. The poet is devoted to his friend ,the latter is unmindful to the poet. The young man is not capable of a mutual,warm friendship: Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day, And make me travel forth without my cloak, To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way, Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke? Sonnet 34. The speaker is puzzled and painfully disappointed by the youth, whose
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callousness dashes any hope of his enjoying a dependable friendship. The opening complaint, again based on the metaphor of the young man as the sun, shows how much the poet's perceptions have changed. As in the sonnet 34, he has been wounded by the youth, and apologies notwithstanding, the scar remains: For no man well of such a salve can speak That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace. In the following sonnets we also notice some indocurous behaviours of the young man. He is selfish and of loose morality. From those sonnets it becomes apparent that the young friend has developed a secrete relation with the speakers mistress. Though the poet does not openly condemn his friend,he wavers between anger at and forgiveness of the young man. Line 7 begins, "But yet be blamed," and readers expect the poet to rant in extreme hostility at the youth, but this mood then shifts to the forgiveness contained in lines 9 and 10: "I do forgive thy robb'ry, gentle thief, / Although thou steal thee all my poverty." In lines 11 and 12, the mood shifts again, but now the poet waxes philosophically about the contrasts between love and hate: ". . . it is a greater grief / To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury." And finally, even while angry over the affair, the poet forgives the youth's lecherous nature: Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows Kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes. In the sonnet 42 the speaker also expresses his suppressed anger for his friend and also finds consolotion from the syllogistic argument that he and his friend are one and the same person and that his mistress therefore loves only him even if she has become his friends mistress. The friend can be faithless but the poet remains ever faithful to him which earns good admiration to our eyes. Amid his suffering, the poet's dignity emerges in his high minded endurance, in the strength of his love, his forgiveness, his dry humor, and his powerful verse. The "fair youth" sonnets conclude with an awed realization of the power of genuine love to triumph over any suffering. Love is precious not because the youth is worthy or because the erotic impulse is sweet to fulfill, but because love alone can overcome life's unrelenting waste and futility: Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
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Whatever is the source of the strength the poet finds, it is this immortal truth and beauty that the sonnets magnificently celebrate. Thus though the poets emotion ,which originally is that of admiration ,develops until it becomes adoration.But the young man emerges as a selfish man of dual personality.He belongs to the aristocratic family but his moral taste is coarse and immoral. There are many mysteries in the life of William Shakespeare and perhaps none is more intriguing than the one he initiated himself when he published, in 1609, a collection of his sonnets. Because of the ways Shakespeare mentions about the Fair Youth, many people wonder if the Sonnets are his autobiography. I myself think that, the great majority of the Sonnets, as Wordsworth says, "express Shakespeare's own feelings in his own person". Furthermore, the sonnets possess a baffling dedication to one "Mr WH", described as "the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets". What more can one add before entering the lists of contention and dissent? It is fair to say that some of the sonnets to the Fair Youth are unabashedly homoerotic, others display a wistful, unrequited sensuality, rather like that of Aschenbach for Tadzio in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. On the other hand, some of the sonnets addressed to the Dark Lady are unabashedly misogynistic, full of lingering physical detail, and relentlessly explore the consuming and destructive power of lust. From the outset of any reading of the sonnets there is an inevitable and natural tendency to link the Fair Youth with the dedicatee, Mr WH, the "only begetter". Many candidates have been suggested over the years but the academic consensus focuses mainly on two: the Earl of Southampton and the Earl of Pembroke. The arguments for both are strong; there is a biographical Shakespearean connection with each man and the dates fit. IV.Recommendation and conclusion: 1.Recommendation: Via this servey, I want to mention to the Shakespeares sense of beauty, as well as his life. The Fair Youths beauty is the type that Shakespeare adores. Many people believe that the sonnets reflect Shakespeare's real life and loves.

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Coming as they do at the end of conventional Petrarchan sonneteering, Shakespeare's sonnets can also be seen as a prototype, or even the beginning, of a new kind of "modern" love poetry. 2.Conclusion : The Sonnets is considered to be Shakespeares the most popular poetry. Throughout the sonnets, we can see not only the beauty of the Fair Youth but also Shakespeares inner world.

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REFERENCES

1.

Reese, M.M.(1980). Shakespeare:His world and his work

2 . http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/nov/19/classics.shakespeare
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare's_sonnets http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/xSonnets.html http://literature11.pbworks.com/w/page/32491429/Sonnets http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/shakesonnets/context.html

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