Astrophil and Stella #1, Philip Sidney

[lnhammer]

The line-length for sonnets is usually the default line-length for the language it's written in -- hendecasyllables in Italian, alexandrine in French, iambic pentameter in English, and so on. Usually, but not always, and just as poets have always played with words, so they have with forms. Phillip Sidney's cycle Astrophel and Stella was experimental in so many ways, above and beyond the obvious one of being the first sonnet cycle in English: not only does the opening play merry heck with the conventions of renaissance rhetoric, it's in hexameter:


Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That the dear She might take some pleasure of my pain:
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,
    I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain:
Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sun-burned brain.
    But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay,
Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows,
And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Thus great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
        Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
        "Fool" said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart and write."


What line-lengths and meters other than iambic pentameter do you consider acceptable in a sonnet? Do the lines always have to be the same length? Can you provide examples?

---L.

Comments

[spiralsheep]

I always wonder how I might've reacted to that sonnet if I'd read it in its own time instead of mine. Helas, I'm a child of the twentieth century and so, while I read, my mind is reciting in response:

Why so pale and wan, fond lover?
Prithee why so pale?
Will, when looking well can't move her,
Looking ill prevail?
Prithee why so pale?

Why so dull and mute, young sinner?
Prithee why so mute?
Will, when speaking well can't win her,
Saying nothing do't?
Prithee why so mute?

Quit, quit for shame, this will not move,
This cannot take her;
If of herself she will not love,
Nothing can make her;
The devil take her!

- Sir John Suckling

[lnhammer]

*wry g*

[bookblather]

Oh, that's interesting... I look at this as a sonnet, line length regardless, but when I write my own sonnets, I have to write them in iambic pentameter. I mean, this to me reads as a sonnet-- maybe because it has the rhyme pattern.

I do feel that the lines should all be the same length in a sonnet, but I think that's a peculiarity of my own, since I also think sestinas should have the same line lengths and that's just cruel to the writer.

[lnhammer]

I don't think it's a peculiarity just of you -- it seems to be the consensus. One I agree with -- I don't think I've met something with varied lengths that read as a sonnet to me, no matter how close to the form it stayed otherwise.

(Well, not counting the bob-and-tail of a caudal sonnet. But that has other problems, when it comes to being a sonnet.)

---L.

[bookblather]

Oh, interesting. I wonder if it's because we look at sonnets as such a measured form? Like uneven lines is cheating, because the sonnet is supposed to be bound by such strict measures.

[lnhammer]

I'm not really sure why. I was hoping someone would have a better idea than I do.

---L.

[lnhammer]

Here's a thought experiment: a sonnet where a final couplet is a foot long -- hexameter instead of pentamter. I can conceive of this still feeling like a sonnet, depending on how the poet handled it.

---L.

[bookblather]

One foot long, or one foot longer? Because I'd be willing to give the second one a go, but I don't know if I could make the sonnet effective with only two feet to make the final couplet.

[lnhammer]

Er, "longer," ja.

*facepalms back to the dungeon*