Sir Philip Sidney's sonnets are collected in his sonnet
cycle Astrophil and Stella, names
meaning Star-Lover and Star, respectively. Sonneteers wrote a lifetime of sonnets that
were unified in structure and rhyme to form an href="http://masterworksbritlit.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/background-to-sir-philip-sidney-and-the-sonnet-tradition/">
extended narrative. The unifying subject in Sidney's cycle is the unrequited
love of Astrophil for Stella. His cycle has 108 sonnets in it and is generally accepted
as having significant autobiographical elements.
Sidney follows the
Petrarchan model of iambic pentameter, although some are in hexameter. He departs
from Petrarch somewhat in rhyme scheme. Of several variations,
abbaabba cdcd ee is an oft occurring
rhyme scheme. Compared to the Shakespearean scheme, this may be considered an octave
with href="http://www.literature-study-online.com/essays/astrophil_and_stella.html">interlacing
rhyme (especially at the center aa)
followed by a sestet in two rhyme patterns: cdcd
and ee.
Another way to analyze it is as an octave followed by a quatrain and
couplet.
This differs from the Petrarchan
abbaabba octave and
cdcdcd sestet (one of many possible
Petrarchan sestet schemes: e.g., cddcdc,
cdecde etc), which has no couplet. Both sonneteers employ the
volta, or turn in idea, at the ninth
line. However, Sidney may on occasion delay the href="http://www.sonnets.org/basicforms.htm">volta as in sonnet LXXI, where
it occurs at the fourteenth line:
readability="11">So while thy beauty draws the heart to love,
12
As fast thy Virtue bends that love to good.
13"But, ah," Desire still cries, "give me some food."
14Sidney differs from
Shakespeare in that Shakespeare’s sonnets develop a different rhyme scheme altogether,
that being abab cdcd efef gg: three
quatrains followed by a couplet. Also, Shakespeare has double voltas at lines 9 and 5,
producing two changes of idea.readability="26">Sidney
Sonnet 8
Love, born
in Greece, of late fled from his native place,
Forc’d by a tedious proof, that
Turkish harden’d heart
Is no fit mark to pierce with his fine pointed
dart,
And pleas’d with our soft peace, stayed here his flying
race.
But finding these north climes do coldly him embrace,
Not used
to frozen clips, he strave to find some part
Where with most ease and warmth
he might employ his art:
At length he perch’d himself in Stella’s joyful
face,
Whose fair skin, beamy eyes, like morning sun on
snow,
Deceiv’d the quaking boy, who thought from so pure
light
Effects of lively heat must needs in nature grow.
But she most
fair, most cold, made him thence take his flight
To my close heart, where
while some firebrands he did lay,
He burnt un’wares his wings, and cannot fly
away.Sonnet 8 follows the
interlacing abbaabba cdcd ee rhyme
scheme. The octave discusses Stella in relation to Cupid, with the first
abba rhyme set devoted to Cupid
("Love, born in Greece") who flees "Turkish harden'd hearts" for England's "soft peace."
The second abba set is devoted to
showing Stella is better than others who “do coldly [Cupid]
embrace":At
length he perch’d himself in Stella’s joyful
face,The volta at line 9
moves the sonnet from Cupid to a description of Stella that ends in chastisement as
Astrophil says:readability="7">But she most fair, most cold, made [Cupid] thence
take his flightThe couplet
presents a paradoxical resolution as Astrophil writes that Cupid flew from Stella to
himself--close by--where Cupid laid a fire of love that cannot be dampened
because:readability="9">[Cupid flew] To my close heart, where while some
firebrands he did lay,
He burnt un’wares his wings, and [now] cannot fly
away.
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