Shakespeare as a poet
national poet of england - known as the bard of stratford avon or the bard of avon or simply "The bard"
dedicated his first poetic work - venus and adoinis (1593) to in his own words "the first heir of my invention", to his patron. the earl of southampton - henry wriothesely
inspired by marlow's poem - hero and leander
shakespeare's other poem is "the rape of lucerece -
michael drayton declared that this poem was revived to live another age
george saintsbury referring to shakespeare as a poet - all three larger pieces - the rape of lucerece and venus and adonis and the sonnets - in personal fashion than the scheme of his drama - concerned w love
venus and adonis
six lined stanza
lyrical flow made composers choose "bid me discourse" and " to here the gentle lark"for settling them into "song measures"
the rape of lucrece
1593
1594
seven line stanza
larger than venus
deals with criminal and unhappy tragic passion
contains 1855 lines and 256 stanzas
iambic metre
1194 lines, 199 stanzas
iambic metre
sonnets
154 sonnets - the first 126 sonnets are addressed to henry wriothesely and the earl of penbroke- william habert
the next 26 sonnets are addressed to a dark and wanton lady who betrays the poet for "guilded and wayword youth"
rhyme scheme - abab, cdcd, efef and gg
three quatrains and a concluding couplet -called the shakesperean or the english sonnet - different from the patrarchan sonnet