Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2007
The present trend of criticism is bringing Shakespeare’s poems and his plays together. A dramatic element is recognized in short poems of many kinds—Shakespeare’s sonnets, Keats’s odes, the lyrics of Yeats. Like plays they attempt to give through some fiction (the truest poetry is the most feigning) form, and so meaning, to experiences whose real-life occasions are now lost to us and are, in any case, none of our business. A sonnet cannot help in the interpretation of a play, nor can the play throw any light on the sonnet’s meaning, if the two works are thought of as belonging to different grades of imitation; if the sonnet, for example, is a snippet of biography or a poetic exercise. But if the two kinds of poetry are regarded, despite their differences in magnitude, as products of the same imaginative process, then our reading of the one can illumine our understanding of the other. In particular, these cross-references can lead us to a fuller understanding of the main theme of the sonnets: the complex and profoundly disturbed relationship of the poet with the friend to whom most of the sequence is addressed.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.