Shakespeare's Sonnets

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? 

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date: 

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; 

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest: 

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

Sonnet 130

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks; 
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
   And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
   As any she belied with false compare.

Sonnet 29

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state 
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate, 
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, 
With what I most enjoy contented least; 
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state, 
Like to the lark at break of day arising 
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Sonnet 30

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,

And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,

And moan the expense of many a vanish's sight:

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily form woe to woe tell o'er

The sad account for fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before,

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restored and sorrows end

Shakespearean Comedy

This concept, comedy, is different from what we know now. The Shakespearean Comedy always has a happy-ending.

The characters have internal and external conflicts, and for these plays is more important what is happening than who is doing the action.

Some examples are The Merchant of Venice and As you like it.

Hamlet

Today I will talk about William Shakespeare's Hamlet.

It's original name is The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. It's a longest play which talk about Prince Hamlet's revenge against his uncle Claudius because he killed his father, King Hamlet.

English language received some influence with this play which is also the most performed. It has been analyzed and criticized; Freud made an analysis of this play. According to each period, the critics were different.

William Shakespeare (1564-1619)

He was a poet and writer. We don't have much information about his early live.

Shakespeare was smart and studied; he wrote even writing were only for rich people. He was married with a good-positioned girl. It's said they had a child but he was dead when he was 11 years old, and Shakespeare wrote Hamlet for him.

Because of his writings, some people in the court wanted Shakespeare dead. Queen Elizabeth I loved his plays and King James I made Shakespeare more famous.

Sir Walter Raleigh

Sir Walter Raleigh lived in England from 1522 to 1618.
He wrote some poems and also he was a politician and a sailor, he would later become a pirate. Raleigh tobacco bears his name because he made tobacco popular in Europe.

He was famous for his proximity to Queen Elizabeth I who protected him. Raleigh also fought Irish rebels to protect England.

When Jacob I was crowned, Raleigh is accused of betrayal to the kingdom and then he was arrested.


He would travel to America and then he was arrested again. He was then decapitated in 1618.

He was friend of Edmund Spencer and he was also important for the Virginia colony in the New world.

He wrote: What is our life, Farewell to false love, The lie, Ocean to Cynthia, My last will, The silent lover among others.

Geoffrey Chaucer & The Canterbury Tales

A group of pilgrims are travelling together for five days from London to Canterbury. On the way, each pilgrim has to tell a story. Some stories are happy, and some are sad. But they all have a message, and we can learn from them.

The writer of these tales, Geoffrey Chaucer, was born in London in about 1342. We don't know exactly when he was born. His father, John, and his grandfather, Robert, worked in the wone business. They probably also worked for King Edward III. The family earned quite a lot of money and had a comfortable life.

When he was a young boy, Chaucer went to school in London. He then worked for an important lady in the king's family. It was a very good job and he met some very interesting people.

In 1359 Chaucer was sent abroad as a soldier. He was fighting for the king against France in part of the Hundred Years' War. He was taken prisioner by the French near Rheims, but after a year the king paid money for his return.

When he returned to England, Chaucer worked for the king, his family and friends. In about 1367 he married Philippa de Roet, a lady who worked for the queen.

Chaucer was a great reader and he had an excellent memory. He learned to read in Laton, French, Anglo-Norman and Italian. He knew a lot about literature, history and science.

The king often sent him to other countries on important business for him. On two of these journeys Chaucer went to Italy; first to Genoa, in 1372, and then to Milan, in 1378. People think that Chaucer became interested in Italian story-tellers on these journeys. He probably met the Italian writer, Boccaccio, when he was in Italy. We can be sure that he read Boccaccio's book, the Decameron.


Chaucer became a rich man during this time, but in December 1368, he lost his job. John of Gaunt, the king's son and Chaucer's friend, left England to fight in Spain. The Duke of Gloucester took his place and he didn't like Chaucer. He gave Chaucer's job to his fiends. So Chaucer had more time for writing, and he began work on The Canterbury Tales.

In 1389 John of Gaunt returned to England and gave Chaucer an important job again. Chaucer was growing old. He felt that his writing was getting worse. He died on 25 October, 1400, and his body was put in Westminster Abbey.

Chaucer wroked on The Canterbury Tales from 1386 or 1387, but he never finished the book. In 1477 Caxton made the first machine which could print in England. He printed the book in 1478.

The Canterbury Tales was not the first book of short stories. Cahucer's idea - a group of people who each tell a story - wasn't a new idea either. In Boccaccio's Decameron, ten people escape to the country from a terrible illness in Florence. Each person tells a story to pass the time.

In The Canterbury Tales, the story-tellers are pilgrims. Their stories are interesting, but the pilgrims also seem very real to us. We feel we know them personally by the end of their stories. They are ordinary people - rich and poor, intelligent and stupid, young and old, from the town and from the country. They don't do the same jobs as we do today. But we all know people like them. The pilgrims' stories help us to undestand English life in Chaucers' time.

The pilgrims' stories are all completely different, and they come from all over Europe. Some of the stories even come from countries in the East. At that time, people in Europe loved stories which taught then something - stories with a message about life or a new idea.

The stories in The Canterbury Tales are told like poems, and they are written in Chaucers' English.

Medieval Literature

The medieval literature was composed of religious writings as well as secular works. We can say that it started with Beowulf but that is just for having an idea, another important book is The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.


In the medieval ages, literature was meant to be only for rich people or clerics; women, workers or kids cannot read because it was only for "people who really deserve it"

If read a book was like a privilege, imagine how important was the one who write books. In those books we can find beautiful handmade paintings.


The stories were about knights, kings and, in some cases, old legends.


I think this period is very important, but not my favourite, for our literature, because they made important the fact of sharing ideas, thoughs and life events.

Bayeux Tapestry

Today I'm going to talk about the Bayeux Tapestry. This is an interesting piece of art from the Battle of Hastings.


This tapestry it's about the Norman conquest of England, between William and Harold. It has some incriptions and, obviously, images that describe the battle.

It is really long and it is made with thread, but you cannot see it until you're very close to it. It has very detailed images as decapitated warriors or some others without an arm or a leg.


It's a very interesting piece of art, as I told, and with that we can understand more about this part of the English history.