Trying to Write a Sonnet

Here's what I found out tonight: IT'S HARD TO WRITE A SONNET.

My broader topic is love/romance, and I chose to write a sonnet this week, in hopes of gaining a new appreciation for the sonnets and to try and get into the mind of Shakespeare a little. Although it was a little frustrating for me (I'm more of a free verse person), it was also a lot of fun. But as of right now, I only have the first four lines. It's my goal to finish it this weekend. But here's what I've got so far:

Sometimes I get so full of flame I blurt
While Formality blushes. However
I soon play off my passion as mere flirt
Or flatness- I love you!. . . or whatever.

If any of you have some suggestions of how I can push through my frustration/writer's block, please let me know!

A Quick Update

My topic, just to remind everyone, is love/romance in Shakespeare. Some of you have suggested that I narrow my topic to just one play, or one specific idea. I thank you for your contributions. I don't think I've narrowed things down enough yet, but there are three main areas I'm interested in. Dr. Burton told me to contact Bruce Young, one of BYU's professors, to request some good sources for my topic. These are the things I told him I would like to research:

• The societal beliefs and customs concerning sex before marriage and how that topic was usually addressed on and off stage. I want to relate it to the sexual conditioning of our day.
• The difference between Shakespeare's audiences of his plays vs. his sonnets. I'm trying to figure out what Shakespeare really thought about romantic love. The themes within his sonnets seem to differ greatly from the themes in his plays, and I'm hoping this could give me some insight into what he really believed.
  
• And then basically any reliable information on Shakespeare's audience in general. I want to relate his audience to that of Hollywood's and draw some conclusions on what this says about each society.

He hasn't gotten back to me, but for this week I am choosing to focus on the sonnets, specifically sonnet 116. Because the sonnets were directed towards a much more private audience, I'm hoping that they will give me more insight into what Shakespeare really thought about love. I don't trust his plays so much because with those he was just trying to make money.

My main source for becoming acquainted is Shakespeare's Sonnets by Dympna Callaghan. This book is meant to be an introduction to the sonnets and explores a few prominent themes, as well as some history.

Shakespeare and Controversy

As I've been thinking about The Winter's Tale, I've been trying to figure out why Shakespeare was advocating the idea of sex and its benefit through the strong, triumphant character of Hermione (I talk about this in my previous blog post). At first my thought was that maybe Shakespeare was trying to break the mold a bit and introduce a taboo topic on the stage to try and spark a bit of social change. However, after doing a little research, I don't think this was his motive.

Dr. Burton reminded me of one of his former students, Becca, who contacted Phyllis Rackin and got some feedback from her. (Becca's blog). Here is a part of what Phyllis said:

"I doubt that the players were using their stages as platforms to advocate for social change. I think they were trying to make money and that their choice of plays that raised touchy questions about gender was largely dictated by popular interest in those questions. I think drama thrives on conflict, sensationalism, and social anxieties, and I think the big point to remember about the playhouses is that they were commercial."

After reading this, I'm thinking that this topic if sex is good or original sin was a controversial topic, and Shakespeare explored this to spark intrigue and make a few bucks. I want to further research this idea and what the common belief was during the Renaissance, and I think I'm well on my way. Hopefully my next post will include some solid research.

Chastity, a China Plate, and The Winter's Tale

My focus for the rest of the semester will be love and romance. It's a little broad, I know, but as I explore and research this topic, I'm hoping that my topic will narrow down a bit.

While reading Act 3, scene 2 in "The Winter's Tale" I found some criticism on the sexual love aspect and how it relates to the character Leontes.

In Peter Lindenbaum's essay, "Time, Sexual Love, and the Uses of Pastoral in The Winter's Tale", he suggests that Leontes looks back on his childhood with a wistful fondness:

"Leontes, like Polixenes, quite understandably looks back to his youth as a time of joy and safety, and he is quite consciously expressing a wish to be back in that happier period; he too wishes he could stop time's movement."

He then goes on to explain that the thing which ruined Leontes blissful childhood was the introduction of sexual love. Within the play Polixenes classifies sex as original sin and the cause of the defilement of innocence. It seems that both Leontes and Polixenes have a fear of sex.

What I thought of while reading this was my Marriage prep class. The professor said that in Mormon culture, a lot of our analogies and object lessons concerning chastity are actually quite damaging. For example, you may have heard of the broken china plate lesson. A sweet, caring beehive adviser will stand up in front of a group of impressionable 12 year old girls and show them a carefully crafted china plate and emphasize its beauty and wholeness. Then, with a sudden swing, she smashes the plate against the wall and it shatters into hundreds of pieces while the poor little beehives look on in terror. The adviser then explains that having sex before marriage is like breaking your one and only china plate. This object lesson teaches that sex is inherently bad. Well, just as this damaging analogy within Mormon culture can negatively affect a person's attitudes toward sex, Polixenes' connection of sex to original sin is just as damaging, and negatively affects Leontes, who slips into a fit of sexual jealousy.

In contrast to this fear is Hermione. Lindenbaum explains:

Polixenes has been unconsciously betraying a disapproval or even fear of sexual love. It is a fear that Hermione clearly does not share. For in telling Polixenes to go on, she even welcomes the charge of being a devil or a temptress, if it is only her participation in sexual love that makes her the offender."

Hermione is innocent and reasonable and secures the reader's confidence with her character. Thus, with her acceptance of sex (made obvious by her conspicuous stomach) she makes clear that Leontes' perceptions of sex and his fear of it are unhealthy and incorrect.

Bibliography:
Lindenbaum, Peter. "Time, Sexual Love, and the Uses of Pastoral in The Winter's Tale." The Winter's Tale: Critical Essays. Ed. Maurice Hunt. New York: Garland Publishing, 1995. Print.

Peer Review

Brooke Randell:
1. 19 posts
2. I think most of Brooke's posts are adequately substantial. She employs thoughtful analysis, does a good job linking, and refers to a lot of outside sources. I think her blog is excellent.
3. A strength I noticed is her ability to interest her audience. Her subject matters are very unique, in comparison with other blogs within our class, such as costume design. Her language and humor make it very accessible. It doesn't feel like work to read her blog, and I'd say that's a very good thing.
4. One of the only things I noticed that Brooke could do to improve her blog is to refer more specifically to the learning outcomes. Maybe she could create tabs for each post and label it as a particular learning outcome (And I feel like a hypocrite saying this because this is something I could do better as well).

Midterm Evaluation

1. I am meeting a few of the goals I've set for myself, but most of them are overshadowed by the goal of achieving breadth within my reading. In addition to breadth I'm delving into textual and contextual analysis by reading the introductions to each play found within our textbook and keeping an eye out for formal devices and then blogging about my findings.

2. I have read Henry V, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and The Tempest. In addition to the original text, I've looked up critical essays on the BYU library website. I've also researched the web, of course, and have founds a lot of informal, yet useful information.

3. I do make reference to other texts, but I could do better with linking to other learners and blog posts.

4. I am noticing a trend within my studies, though it's a bit general. I'm noticing that when I read a play I tend to focus on lessons and themes that directly apply to my life, and then try to find some sort of application. For example, when I read a Romeo and Juliet, I focused on the idea of light and darkness and the virtues and vices of Romeo's two loves, Rosaline and Juliet. This is because I was currently trying to decide between two opportunities I had in the dating world, and I was hoping Shakespeare's words on love could provide some sort of counsel. So, my interests vary from play to play, but I find consistency in that I want to learn lessons that apply to my life. And it isn't hard to find those lessons because at the core of Shakespeare's plays is timeless human experience.

5. What I've done best so far, sadly, is just reading the plays. Now, I need to focus on going deeper or expanding my modes of learning and connecting.

6. Rebecca Ricks: She made an amazing comment on my latest post and gave me some useful information.
Brooke Randell: She makes good comment in class, as well as on my blog.

Light vs. Dark

I wanted to try and answer my own question of whether or not Shakespeare was advocating this idea of young, swift love or not. And I attempted to answer it through the motifs of light and darkness found within the play. In the beginning when Romeo is pining over Rosaline, his life is full of darkness. He wanders around before the sun comes up and his father explains:

Away from light steals home my heavy son
And private in his chamber pens himself,
Shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out,
And makes himself an artificial night.

In opposition to this permeating darkness, Romeo meets Juliet, whom he describes as a "bright angel". She is the light seeping through his chamber, which causes Romeo to ask, "what light through yonder window breaks?" The fact that Shakespeare created this metaphor of Juliet being an angel and Rosaline only creating darkness in Romeo's life is a clear message that the love between Romeo and Juliet is real, even divine.

Now, it's easy to mock this idea that two strikingly young people could really fall in love so instantly. However, maybe we should reconsider. In the movie Bright Star, the character John Keats says to his friend who is mocking his feelings for a girl, "There is a holiness to the heart's affection which you know nothing about!" This goes along with what Romeo utters just before he sees the light from Juliet's room, "He jests at scars that never felt a wound." Could it be that these emotions of love, infatuation, or whatever you want to call them, are in and of themselves valid? And that you can't mock them until you've felt them yourself?

I have one last question. Why did Romeo seek after this darkness in the beginning? When thinking about this my mind went to a little insight from Nietzsche in his book The Gay Science:

"Those who seek rest. -The spirits who seek rest I recognize by the many dark objects with which they surround themselves: those who want to sleep make their room dark or crawl into a cave. -A hint for those who do not know what it is that they seek most, but who would like to know."

With this in mind, how can we make sense of Romeo welcoming darkness and even creating for himself "an artificial night"?