On Shakespeare's 460th Birthday...

...A Reflection on His Enduring Poetic Genius

by Julia Buckley

This month we appreciate those poetic voices that gave words staying power, words that burrowed inside us and found our hearts and souls. But rhyme and rhythm, those two companions that helped to give the words their gloss, remain a crucial part of poetry, and William Shakespeare must be acknowledged today as a poet, a genius of iambic pentameter who gave us the Elizabethan (or Shakespearean) sonnet and a multitude of poetic phrasings to live by.

The simple format of the Bard’s sonnet style was ABAB  CDCD EFEF  GG. Thus, you had alternating rhyming lines, grouped in quatrains, until the final two lines (thirteen and fourteen) when you created a rhyming couplet, and this became the “mic drop” of your whole poem.

Among the many ways one can celebrate poetry and Shakespeare this month is to write a sonnet, or many sonnets, and read them aloud, revelling in the rhythm, rhyme, and intelligent wording of the poem.

For example, if I were to be asked to write a sonnet about National Poetry Month, I might begin—

What poems bring to ev’ry human heart
Cannot be measured with a mortal tool
But must be calibrated as an art

That elevates the thinking of a fool.

For those interested in sonnets, there’s a lovely video on this Shakespearean site, along with links to all of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

You can explore his beautiful sonnets and poems in the sites above, but I want to mention one more aspect of his poetic gift: the way he brought his poetry into his drama. Many of Shakespeare’s plays were written in iambic pentameter (or partially so), but that lovely regular line rhythm isn’t always apparent because he wrote in Blank Verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter). His diction, though, is unmistakably poetic, and I’ll support this contention with some of my favorite examples.

First, which love sonnet is superior to the words spoken by Romeo when he realizes that what he felt for Rosaline was infatuation, but what he feels for Juliet is love. As with the sonnets, Shakespeare seeks a sublime image to demonstrate the transformative power of Romeo’s love. What better than the metaphor of light? When Romeo lays eyes upon his young love, he concludes:

O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o’er her fellows shows.
The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand,
And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!

For I ne’er saw true beauty til this night.

--Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene 5

It amazes me each time I read it that Shakespeare had so much insight into every aspect of the human condition, including the overwhelming sensations of love. Romeo felt such love and such awe at her beauty that light itself could not compare to her. Shakespeare lifted the notion of love to the sublime, the eternal, and thus made it profound.

Emily Dickinson once explained the essence of poetry in a letter, saying,

“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know it. Is there any other way?”                         ( L342a, 1870)

I like to use Dickinson’s method of determining what is poetic because it is the words that elicit a physical reaction that have already made it into our consciousness. Her “top of the head” feeling comes to me often when I read William Shakespeare, or the Romantic poets, or Emily Dickinson!  So all of my excerpts here are lines that moved me to a state of awe.

The poetry in Shakespeare’s plays gives them their staying power (401 years since his death), and there are so many other beautiful poetic moments:

Prospero the magician, in The Tempest, after giving up his power, and determining in an existential speech that “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.”

Or Macbeth, forced to sacrifice his selfish dream, his kingdom, and probably his life, concluding, “I ‘gin to be aweary of the sun.”

Or his wife, Lady Macbeth, plagued by horrible dreams and heavy guilt, murmuring “Hell is murky . . . “

Or Old King Lear, lamenting, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is a thankless child.”

Such powerful, poetic language cannot help but live on. Note the use of metaphor, simile, allusion, alliteration, personification, and other poetic devices in the quotes above that elevate the words to poetic status even without the use of rhyme.

Entire books have been written about Shakespeare’s poetic genius, and I have only made a clumsy foray into his talent. I hope, though, that these examples will send you to his works to reclaim your own favorites by this great poet who remains a gift to literature and mankind.

 

Julia Buckley is a Chicago-area writer. 

She taught high school English at an all-girls school for more than thirty years, and she considered the teaching of Shakespeare’s works an honor and a true joy. 

She has published several mystery series, including the bestselling Writer’s Apprentice series. 

She lives in the suburbs with her husband, within driving distance of her two sons.