Hostname: page-component-5b777bbd6c-w9n4q Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-06-25T05:35:39.761Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Prosodic Unrest in Shakespeare's Sonnets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2025

Gregory Machacek
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

One particular effect to which Shakespeare puts the verbal rhythms in his sonnets is to generate a kind of prosodic unrest. To illustrate this effect, this essay first distinguishes and coordinates a set of six or seven forms of syllabic emphasis involved when a reader prepares to voice a sonnet aloud. This prosodic taxonomy allows readers to discern and appreciate a kind of tension Shakespeare generates in the syllables that make up his rhythmic verses, a prosodic tension that underscores the emotion depicted in many of the “dark lady” sonnets and in some of the more angst-ridden of the other sonnets, particularly those where he treats the injuries that the fair youth and he have suffered at each other's hands.

Type
Essay
Information
PMLA , Volume 140 , Issue 1 , January 2025 , pp. 38 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Works Cited

Attridge, Derek. Poetic Rhythm: An Introduction. Cambridge UP, 1995.Google Scholar
Attridge, Derek. The Rhythms of English Poetry. Routledge, 1982.Google Scholar
Barret, J. K. “Enduring ‘Injurious Time’: Alternatives to Immortality and Proleptic Loss in Shakespeare's Sonnets.” Crawforth et al., pp. 137–56.Google Scholar
Burrow, Colin. “Shakespeare's Sonnets as Event.” Crawforth et al., pp. 99–116.Google Scholar
Chatman, Seymour. A Theory of Meter. Mouton, 1965.Google Scholar
Corn, Alfred. The Poem's Heartbeat: A Manual of Prosody. Copper Canyon Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Crawforth, Hannah, et al., editors. The Sonnets: The State of Play. Bloomsbury, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Creaser, John. Milton and the Resources of the Line. Oxford UP, 2022.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Grazia, Margreta. “Revolution in Shake-speares Sonnets.” A Companion to Shakespeare's Sonnets, edited by Schoenfeldt, Michael, Blackwell Publishing, 2010, pp. 57–69.Google Scholar
Dubrow, Heather. “‘Against’ Interpretations: Rereading Sonnet 49.” Shakespeare Up Close: Reading Early Modern Texts, edited by McDonald, Russ et al., Bloomsbury, 2012, pp. 154–60.Google Scholar
Fussell, Paul. Poetic Meter and Poetic Form. Rev. ed., McGraw-Hill, 1979.Google Scholar
Roe, John. “Unfulfilled Imperatives in Shakespeare's Sonnets.” Crawforth et al., pp. 77–94.Google Scholar
Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespeare. Edited by Greenblatt, Stephen et al., 3rd ed., W. W. Norton, 2016.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Karl. Beyond Criticism. U of Nebraska P, 1953.Google Scholar
Sidney, Philip. The Defence of Poesy. The Major Works, edited by Duncan-Jones, Katherine, Oxford UP, 2008, pp. 212–50.Google Scholar
Vendler, Helen. The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Belknap Press, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, George. Shakespeare's Metrical Art. U of California P, 1991.Google Scholar