January 10, 2011: I decided to bring this scansion “up to date”.Here is how Shakespeare most likely expected his sonnet to be read. Likewise, there’s a tone to Shakespeare’s sonnet that we miss if we fail to take the meter into account. There is no way to know whether this is actually what Donne intended, but the reading is reinforced by the poem’s Iambic pattern. But in keeping with the tone of the first line, putting the stress on Thy reinforces that Donne is addressing “Father” and doing so with a direct, knowing tone of voice. The temptation is to read Son as strongly stressed and Thy as weakly stressed. It’s a tone of voice Donne could be angling for, made possible only if one considers the meter. It’s a sort of sly tone of voice which, in the case of Donne’s sonnet, fits with his argument. Even in modern speech we sometimes stress the preposition of – as in: Well, you know, part of the fun is getting drunk. Stressing the preposition of isn’t as awkward as it might seem. Yet even here, knowing that Donne was a skillful master of diction and meter, one could consider an alternate reading (and one should, whenever diction appears to run against a meter’s pattern): Only one of John Donne’s Sonnets, the most controversial metrist of the day, could be construed to begin with two trochaic feet. Two such variant feet at the start of a sonnet was practically unheard of. (In his shorter poems, at least, Shakespeare was much more conservative, leaving the more daring flights of metrical variation to his contemporary, John Donne – who was, regularly, skewered for his turgid meter and blank verse.) But the first line’s two trochaic feet ( Let me | not to ) would have been daring even for Donne – (trochaic feet are the reverse of iambic feet in that the stressed syllable is first and the unstressed second). But, in Shakespeare’s day, so many variants in so short a space would have landed him in critical hot water with his contemporaries and with the reading public.
#Scansion marks free
Since there’s no metrical pattern in free verse one is free to put the emphasis (ictus) wherever one wishes (within reason), depending on ones subjective interpretation of the poem. This reading would be acceptable if this were a free verse poem. These days, I suspect most readers, without a knowledge of meter, would read the poem as follows: I’ll look at other poets and poems, because it’s fun to do, like sleuthing, but I wanted to start with Sonnet 116 because it’s so famous and so frequently misread.
In the hands of a skilled poet (Shakespeare, Keats, Wilbur, Frost, Browning), the tension between language and meter is an art form. And to readers of metered poetry, knowing that there’s an underlying pattern informs the language and meaning of the poem. But to poet’s writing meter, it provides a tool, an extra layer of meaning, counterpoint and play. Meter is of no use to free verse poets or reader’s of free verse. In Shakespeare’s hands, the meter tells us about the writer, the speaker of the sonnet – something we might easily miss. :-)Ī masterfully written metrical poem has two stories to tell – two tales: one in its words the other in its meter. It’s interesting to me to see where readers are coming from and why they are reading these posts. If you’re a student, just leave a comment with the name of your high school or college.
Febru– If you enjoy Frost, you might like reading Birches along with a c o l o r c o d e d scansion of Birches included in my post on Frost’s Mending Wall.(Further links on other Sonnets are at the bottom of this post.) According to my Stats page, this has become one of my most popular posts and no one is commenting! Just say hello or thanks – I like hearing from readers. I’ve also written a detailed guide to Haiku (if you’re interested). I just completed a guide to Shakespearean, Petrarchan and Spenserian Sonnets. I have written other posts on Iambic Pentameter including guides to the scansion of Iambic Pentameter (with more examples from Shakespeare) and a look at Chaucer’s Iambic Pentameter. And let me know if this was helpful or if, especially, there’s a question you would like answered. Don’t forget to check out some of my poetry while you’re picking my brains – I do write some good stuff. A companion guide to this one is the Annotated To be or Not to be.23 2009 Milton, Blank Verse, and Paradise Lost. MaJohn Donne & his Sonnet Death be not proud….– New Post : Bright Star by John Keats, His Sonnet.
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