Blog 3 - Richard II

I would like to respond to King Richard’s soliloquy in act 5, scene 5, lines 1-66.
This speech takes place in Richard’s prison cell, and seems to be his attempt to cling to sanity as his world crumbles around him. In the first part of his talk he speaks of how he wants to replicate the outside world within the confines of his stony walls. However, his world is lacking people, a dilemma he responds to by saying, “Yet I’ll hammer it out”. So, his thoughts become the people who will populate his world, and just like there are classes of people, so also are their classes of these people thoughts. According to Richard there are, “The better sort”, which are divine thoughts, but even among these divine thoughts there are doubters, and as people attend to their own ambitions so do Richard’s people thoughts, “Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot unlikely wonders: how these vain weak nails may tear a passage through the flinty ribs of this hard world, my ragged prison walls”. Richard continues in much the same melancholy way throughout his speech.
I think this passage does a lot to really familiarize you with Richard’s current state of mind, and seeing this more human side of him really calls the audience to sympathize with the deposed king. We have gone from Richard, the divine all powerful monarch, to Richard, the common prisoner. I think creating these more sympathetic feelings toward Richard allow us to look more critically at Bolingbroke towards the end of the play, allowing us to see that there is neither character is absolutely good or absolutely bad.
The most significant metaphor I see in this passage is the likening of Richards own body to his prison cell. As his ambitious plot to break free of his body, so he also wishes to be free of his ragged prison walls. Another image in this passage is faith and divinity, which seems to be an often recurring metaphor. Finally, Richard likens himself to a clock, “For now hath time made me his numb’ ring clock. My thoughts are minutes, and with sighs they jar their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch”. I think this passage somewhat parallels Richard’s Great Speech, Act 3.2 Lines 140-173, at least in the way it similarly changes our perspective of Richard. He begins to look at his own death, and the actions of his past; however, he has not yet reached near the low point and complete sorrow he does in his soliloquy.
The passage I chose was written in blank verse and contains many formal literary techniques. Allegory is one of the most clearly visible examples of this. It can be seen throughout the passage first in Richard’s long metaphor likening his mind to the world, his thoughts to the people, and his body to the prison. Another example of this technique Richard’s time spent comparing himself to the clock whose time has slipped away. Anaphora was used in lines 35-37 when Richard says, “Persuades me I was better when a king. Then I am kinged again, and by and by think that I am unkinged by Bolingbroke”. Finally, there is a perfect example of internal rhyme in line 40-41, “With nothing shall be pleased till he be eased with being nothing.” I think the long allegories in this passage really help us to picture Richard’s state of mind at this time, and without them it would be lacking. I also think the blank verse really feeds into the overall melancholy tone of the piece.

Sonnets 26 and 43

Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream was all supposedly just fantasies of the night, a play of the imagination, a dream. Therefore, it shouldn’t surprise us to find him righting of reveries elsewhere in his work. Two examples are sonnets 27 and 43, both dreams having similar content to one another.

In the first quatrain of sonnet 27, he tells us how even after his body’s work is done his mind carries on, “Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, / The dear repose for limbs with travel tired; / But then begins a journey in my head, / To work my mind, when body's work's expired:”( 27. 1-4). In the third quatrain he describes to us exactly what his mind’s eye is seeing, “Save that my soul's imaginary sight/ Presents thy shadow to my sightless view, / Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night, / Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.” (27. 9-12). The couplet in this sonnet leads us to believe that the author may be discontented with his dreams, and he seems exasperated that he can find no peace, day or night, from the character that haunts them.

In sonnet 43, similarly to sonnet 27, in the first quatrain he explains to us he is dreaming, “When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see, / For all the day they view things unrespected; / But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee, / And darkly bright are bright in dark directed.”(43. 1-4). However, in this sonnet he is much quicker to move into telling us about the subject of his dream. He praises his subject’s form, which he refers to in both sonnets as a shadow or shade, by saying, “Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright, / How would thy shadow's form form happy show / To the clear day with thy much clearer light, / When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!” (43. 5-8). Unlike in sonnet 27, the speaker uses the couplet to make us very aware is happy to have these visions, “All days are nights to see till I see thee,” (43. 13). He also mentions, for the first time, his desire that he be seen in the dreams of the one he is dreaming of, “And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.” (43. 14).

While comparing these two pieces I was careful not to give a specific gender to the character in either of these sonnets. This is because according to Norton Shakespeare, “The Sonnets and ‘A Lover’s complaint’”; Shakespeare cast aside the traditional object of an exalted lady and instead centered many of his poems on homosexual characters and fantasies. Norton states that, “Sonnets 1-126 recount the speaker’s idealized, sometimes painful love for femininely beautiful, well born male youth.”(page 1937). However, a specific gender was never given by the speaker in either of these sonnets. The only time gender was even mentioned was in sonnet 27, “Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.” (27. 12), but I read this as just a metaphor for making something unattractive beautiful.

I think it is beneficial to read these sonnets more as dialogue than simply stand-alone poems. The subject matter of both poems is very similar, however without analyzing them side by side it might be possible to miss the author’s clear emotional differences in each work. In the first sonnet he seems bothered by the dream, but in the second he welcomes it.