Spenser: Amoretti LXXV (MA Eng 1st Semester)

Of Italian origin, the sonnet was introduced into the English literature by Wyatt and Surrey in the early sixteenth century, but it was not until the 1590s that this form reached its peak of popularity among Elizabethan poets. This decade and the following witnessed the publication of many sonnet sequences: Sidney's Astrophel and Stella(1591), Daniel's Delia (1592), Lodge's Phillis (1593), Constable's Diana (1594), Drayton'sIdeas's Mirror (1594), Spenser's Amoretti (1595) and Shakespeare's sonnets (1609).

The theme was love, and often these poems were direct translations of Petrarch's sonnets to Laura. Among the conventional subjects which all sonnet sequences included there figured the notion that the poet could immortalize the beauty of his beloved through his verse. We shall analyze two different examples of the treatment of this motif, one by Spenser and the other by Shakespeare.

Spenser: Amoretti LXXV

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
   but came the waves and washèd it away:
   agayne I wrote it with a second hand,
   but came the tyde, and made my paynes his pray.
Vayne man, sayd she, that doest in vaine assay,
   a mortall thing so to immortalize,
   for I my selve shall lyke to this decay,
   and eek my name bee wypèd out lykewize.
Not so, (quod I) let baser things devize
   to dy in dust, but you shall live by fame:
   my verse your vertues rare shall eternize,
   and in the hevens wryte your glorious name.
Where whenas death shall all the world subdew,
   our love shall live, and later life renew.

There are two main types of sonnet forms in the English literature: one is the Petrarchan, which consists of an octave rhyming abba abba followed by a sestet which combines two or three different rhymes; the other is the Shakespearean, organized into three quatrains and one couplet that follow the pattern abab cdcd efef gg. While Italian is a language rich in perfect rhymes, English poets find it difficult to meet the requirements of the Petrarchan rhyme system. Therefore the Shakespearean form, also known as the English sonnet, is the more frequently used of the two.

However, as we can see in Amoretti, Spenser tries to combine both the Italian and the English model. Fourteen iambic pentameters rhyming abab bcbc cdcd ee complete his sonnet. Each quatrain is linked with the preceeding one by a common ryme. In determining the units of content and form within the poem, we should note some indications that point to the idea that Spenser conforms to the English arrangement in three quatrains and one couplet, but there are also evidences that show an octave-sestet division as a more plausible description.

The variations from the iambic pattern are, in this sense, significant. The presence of spondees ("óne dáy/, Váyne mán/, Nót só/, Whére whén/as") at the opening of each quatrain and of the final couplet clearly marks the divisions of the poem when it is read aloud. This, together with the graphic distribution of the lines on the paper (notice the indenture), seems to corroborate the idea that the sonnet can be divided into four parts.

The first quatrain narrates the poet's useless attempt to perpetuate his lady's name by writing it on the sand. The second reproduces the young woman's mild reproof for the futility of this effort. The next four lines contain the poet's reply claiming that his poetry will succeed in bringing her an everlasting admiration. And finally, the closing couplet states that their love will outlive the world itself thanks to this poem.

This analysis does not invalidate the opinion that the sonnet can also be divided into two main parts: an octave which develops an idea (in this case, the conviction that the lady is mortal) and a sestet which shows the poet's response to that subject (poetry has the power to immortalize her and their love).

It is true that, with regard to content, this sonnet LXXV from Amoretti is much more simple that Shakespeare's sonnet LV, which, as we shall see, is characterized by a greater compression of ideas. This simplicity is due to the fact that Spenser's main concern is musicality rather than ingenuity in handling concepts, and multiple devices contribute to that musical quality:

• Repetion of words, as in the case of name, live or shall. There are also examples of polyptoton, i.e. the use of different grammatical forms of the same stem:wrote-wryte, vayne-vain, mortal-immortalize, thing-things. Even the word lykein the second quatrain reappears only a line later, not as itself but as part of the adverb lykewize.
• Abundance of nasal and liquid sounds, which produces an impresion of softness. There is no single line in the poem which does not contain at least one nasal. The hissing sounds are noteworthy as well.
• Alliteration: waves-washèd-away, paynes-pray, wypèd-lykewize, dy-dust, verse-vertues, where-whenas-world, love-live-later-life.
• Assonance [ei] throughout the whole composition: day-name / came-waves-away / agayne / came-made-paynes-pray / vayne-vain-assay / ... / decay / name / baser / fame / ... / name / ... / later.
• Consonance: second-hand, tyde-made, shall-all. In the case of love-live what we observe is an example of pararhyme: initial and final consonants coincide, while the vowel sound distinguishes both words.
• Internal rhyme: name-came.

The sonnet reproduces a conversation between the poet and his lady. But this kind of dialogue is no more than a literary convention, an artifice that permits the author a clever exposition of the central subject of a poem. No real woman would say what this lady says when she discovers that her lover is drawing her name in the beach. We immediately realize that she is fictitious, that these lines are merely an exercise of verbal wit.

But let us examine the poem part by part. The opening quatrain is built upon a verbal parallelism ("I wrote ... / but came the ... and ...") that suggests the speaker's constancy in the face of the difficulties he comes across when he strives to perpetuate the name of his beloved. Once the sea has wiped off what he has written, he moves away from it and tries anew ("agayne ... with a second hand," stressing the poet's perseverance). But all his efforts are futile, for eventually the tide comes in and destroys his strokes on the sand.

The alliteration with [w] in line 2 ("waves ... washèd it away") causes an onomatopoeic effect. With the help of the sibilant consonants these words evoke the foam that the successive waves produce in the beach.

The fourth line closes with a metaphor: "the tyde ... made my paynes his pray." If we say an animal makes another creature its pray, we mean it hunts it, and this constitutes a conventional vehicle to mean that something (in this case "my paynes") is absorbed by something else (the tide). The context implies that the tenor of "my paynes" is the lady's name, which in turn stands metaphorically for the young woman herself: she is the cause of the poet's pains.

The expressions "sayd she" (line 5) and "quod I" (line 9) occupy equivalent positions in their respective quatrains. But this is not the only parallelism that exists between the two structures. If the lady predicts her own death in the third line of the quatrain and the oblivion of her name in the fourth, the sonneteer's reply follows the same pattern and promises first her personal immortality by fame, and then the eternity of her "glorious name" in the fourth line. (A further parallelism can be found in the analogous coordination with and in lines 8 and 12.)

A linguistic pecularity of this conversation that should be noted is the use of the second person. While the poet continually addresses his fried as you, she chooses a verbal form (doest) that corresponds to the pronoun thou. Thou was reserved, from the thirteenth up to the sixteenth century (when it finally disappeared from polite speech), for the conversation with intimates or people of lower rank, while you(originally plural) was used as a sign of respect towards the interlocutor.

Although by the time Amoretti was published you had for the most part taken the place of thou, Spenser retains the latter form for the lady's reproof. This gives her speech a touch of intimacy and softens the reproach. She treats the poet as if his efforts to immortalize her name on the sand were no more than a boyish lark.

A closer analysis of the second quatrain will reveal at least two instances of Spenser's interest for musicality at the expense of lexical richness:

• In line 6 the same stem appears twice (in mortall and in immortalize). The deliberate contrast of meaning between the two terms serves to make evident the fruitlessness of the sonneteer's attempts to perpetuate what is temporal. But the reader cannot but feel that the main purpose of the repetition is to exploit the nasal and the liquid sounds present in these words.
• Rhythm takes precedence over semantic precision, and this priority accounts for the pleonasm in line 8, where eek and lykewyze mean virtually the same.

Apart from the slight enjambment in lines 9-10, the only remarkable feature of the third quatrain is the inversion of adjective and noun in "vertues rare". Usually this alteration of the natural order seeks the effect of foregrounding the quality expressed by the adjective. Yet, in this case the musical impact of the sequence "my verse yourvertues..." justifies in itself the inversion. Actually, Spenser resorts to hyperbaton throughout the whole sonnet in order to keep rhyme and rhythm, so this line constitutes no exception.

In line 12 the lover promises that his poem will write the lady's name in the heavens (where no sea can "wash it away"). This constrast between our mortality as human individuals ("death shall all the world subdue") and the perdurability of poetry is the core of the composition.

In the expression "death shall all the world subdue," besides the conventional personification of death, we observe an example of metonymy. The poet refers to all his contemporaries when he mentions the world: when everybody who is alive today has died, this poem will still be read by those who live a "later life", says the author.

A new element is introduced in the last line of the poem: love. Poetry not only preserves the memory of the lady beyond her death; it has also the ability to perpetuate love. Curiously enough, the sonnet by Shakespeare that we shall examine next also finishes by assuring that his friend will eternally "dwell in lovers' eyes."