Petrarch's and Shakespeare's sonnets
Both writers cemented the sonnet's enduring appeal by demonstrating its flexibility and lyrical potency through the exceptional quality of their poems.
(The symmetries (ABBA vs. CDC) of these rhyme schemes have also been rendered in musical structure in the late 20th century composition Scrivo in Vento inspired by Petrarch's Sonnet 212, Beato in Sogno.)
The rhyme scheme and structure of Petrarch's sonnets work together to emphasize the idea of the poem: the first quatrain presents the theme and the second expands on it.
The effect is “like going for a short drive with a very fast driver: the first lines, even the first quatrain, are in low gear; then the second and third accelerate sharply, and ideas and metaphors flash past; and then there is a sudden throttling-back, and one glides to a stop in the couplet”.
In what bright realm, what sphere of radiant thought Did Nature find the model whence she drew That delicate dazzling image where we view Here on this earth what she in heaven wrought What fountain-haunting nymph, what dryad, sought In groves, such golden tresses ever threw Upon the gust?
[8] Shakespeare's Sonnet 130, in which, “while declaring his love for his mistress, he mocks the Petrarchan standard vocabulary of praise”, is an example that marks English independence from the conventions of Petrarch.
[11] Petrarch's concern for rearrangements in and alterations to his sonnet sequence suggests that he treated his poems like works of art, in which there is always room for improvement.
In Canzoniere, this change comes in the form of Laura's death, and in The Sonnets, it occurs with Shakespeare's shift of focus from “idealizing love to sexual use”.
[15] The three main strategies that English sonneteers end up choosing from are: stopping abruptly in medias res; achieving detachment by moving into a different mode, genre, or voice; or providing a narrative resolution.
A series of complaints can also be found in the concluding sonnets of Shakespeare's sequence, which “justify the beloved’s chastity and break the identification with the poet-lover”.
Indeed, in making it impossible for him to be silent, she is his Muse; Petrarch turns out to be the historical link between the newer meaning of Ovid's theory of his “better half” and its original one.
In the speech that Petrarch gives when he receives the laurel crown on the Capitoline Hill he invokes the conclusion to the Metamorphoses straightforwardly as a proof for his thesis about the nobility of poetic fame, and taken together the two citations define one of the most innovative and influential twists that he gives to the tradition of fin’ amors: this poet's love for his lady is, by design, all but indistinguishable from his literary ambition, his love of the laurel crown.
This poem is a virtuoso sequence of a half dozen Ovidian myths, from Apollo and Daphne to Actaeon and Diana, offered up as figuration of the poet's own subjective experience; it has become known as the canzone della metamorfosi, a sustained “lyricization of epic materials,”[18] which effectively rewrites Ovid's long poem as erotic and professional autobiography.
This incorporation of the Metamorphoses into lyricism has momentous consequences for the following history of Petrarchanism, whereas poets such as Pierre de Ronsard and Barnabe Barnes, used each of the Ovidian myths as a figure for achieved sexual intercourse.
Within the lyric sequence, such evocations play against the expectation of female unattainability, which is also one of Petrarch's legacies, and contribute powerfully to Petrarchanism's reputation for shameless and often bizarre sensuality.
Shakespeare makes such boasts in the Sonnets, and they owe much to Ovidian precedent; but this particular phrase has migrated into different territory, the lover's affirmation of a transcendent dependence on the beloved.
In Sonnet 53, Adonis is paired with Helen as an exemplar of human beauty (53.5, 7); Mars’ name appears, though not Venus (55.7); ‘heavie Saturne’ laughs and dances with ‘proud pide Aprill’ (98.2–4); the nightingale is called Philomel (102.7) and the phoenix is mentioned (19.4).
Desire in the young man is of a different order, intense but also idealized and Platonic in a way which male Petrarchists writing about women often attempt but seldom achieve.
Shakespeare calls his young man "sweet boy" (108, 5) and alludes occasionally to "rosie lips and cheeks" (116, 9), but is otherwise restrained and abstract.
While Petrarch's sonnets focused mainly on one hub, Shakespeare developed many subjects within his themes such as insomnia, slave of love, blame, dishonesty, and sickness.
Despite creating complicated plots, Shakespeare also manages to place ulterior motifs among his two lovers, building new poetic form where Petrarch left off.
"Una strania fenice, ambedue l'ale di porpora vestita, e 'l capo d'oro..." The Focus of love within Petrarch's sonnets contains a unique contrast with Shakespeare's.
[21] This idolization analyzed from a stand point of courtly love draws an interesting segue to the death of Laura in Petrarch's sonnets, which leads to “the sublimation and transformation of desire”.
