EPC-3 Practical-3

                              Sonnet - 33 

                                          - William Shakespeare

      

      

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR :

         William Shakespeare (26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616)was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon".  His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. He remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.

     Shakespeare's works include the 36 plays printed in the First Folio of 1623, listed according to their folio classification as comedies, histories, and tragedies. Two plays not included in the First Folio, The Two Noble Kinsmen and Pericles, Prince of Tyre, are now accepted as part of the canon, with today's scholars agreeing that Shakespeare made major contributions to the writing of both. No Shakespearean poems were included in the First Folio.

     In the late 19th century, Edward Dowden classified four of the late comedies as romances, and though many scholars prefer to call them tragicomedies, Dowden's term is often used. In 1896, Frederick S. Boas coined the term "problem plays" to describe four plays: All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and Hamlet. "Dramas as singular in theme and temper cannot be strictly called comedies or tragedies", he wrote. "We may, therefore, borrow a convenient phrase from the theatre of today and class them together as Shakespeare's problem plays." The term, much debated and sometimes applied to other plays, remains in use, though Hamlet is definitively classed as a tragedy.

ABOUT  THE POEM: 

     

     Shakespeare's Sonnet 33 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. This sonnet is the first of what are sometimes called the estrangement sonnets, numbers 33–36: poems concerned with the speaker's response to an unspecified "sensual fault" mentioned in committed by his beloved.

SUMMARY: 

Stanza-1

      The poet says he has been fortunate to see beautiful mornings “many a glorious morning” where the sun rises over the mountaintops “flatter the mountain tops” making them even more beautiful and appear like royalty “with sovereign eye.” The morning sun kisses the green meadows with its golden color and turns pale looking streams “Gilding pale streams” into the color of gold. He uses the imagery of alchemy “with heaven alchemy” where alchemy was considered a magical science of turning metals into gold.

     It must be noted that the theme of the poem is betrayal and hypocrisy where the poet has changed his attitude of the fair lord or friend to whom his previous sonnets were addressed. The imagery of beauty is replaced throughout the sonnet with something ugly which is reflective of his love and the beautiful relationship he shared with his friend that has now turned sour.

Stanza-2

      In the second quatrain, he says ugly clouds “Anon permit the basest clouds” overshadows the celestial sun “ugly rack on his celestial face.” He is actually comparing his friend to a beautiful sun about to set saying that he hides from the world “forlorn world his visage hide” and runs away in disgrace just like the sun becoming invisible as it sets in the west “stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:”

Stanza-3

     Again comparing the friend to the sun he recalls how they shared a beautiful friendship that shone like a blessing “my sun one early morn did shine” with a splendid glow on his forehead “splendour on my brow;” but unfortunately that moment he feels was very short-lived “he was but one hour mine” and the world has covered him up in ugliness just like clouds overshadow everything “region cloud hath mask’d him from me now.”

     But then he expresses hope saying that all these things do not weaken his love for the friend or fair lord “my love no whit disdaineth” and just like the sun sets and rises again or is shadowed by clouds temporarily, “Suns of the world may stain” then the same thing is happening to his friend whom he compares to a sun of heaven “heaven’s sun staineth.”