10/30/2024 9:23:04 PM

VOLPONE, GORBODUC, VENUS AND ADONIS, SHAKESPEARE'S SONNET

TOPICS

  1. Volpone
  2. Gorboduc (play)
  3. Venus and Adonis (Shakespeare poem)
  4. Shakespeare's Sonnets

  1. VOLPONE(1605-06)
  • It is Italian for sly fox.
  • A comedy by English Playwright Ben Jonson
  • Elements of city comedy, beast fable directed to satire on greed and lust
  • Considered to be the most performed play and among the finest Jacobean era comedies.
  • It was premiered at the Globe Theatre in 1606. It was performed by the King's Men.
  • After the Restoration, the play was owned by the King's Men of Thomas Killigrew. It was performed at Drury Lane in 1663.

  • Characters- very important ( List from Wikipedia)
  • Volpone (the Sly Fox) – a greedy and rich childless Venetian magnifico
  • Mosca (the Fly) – his servant
  • Voltore (the Vulture) – a lawyer
  • Corbaccio (the Raven) – an avaricious old miser
  • Bonario – Corbaccio's son
  • Corvino (the Carrion Crow) – a merchant
  • Celia – Corvino's wife
  • Sir Politic Would-Be – ridiculous Englishman
  • Lady Would-Be (the parrot) – English lady and wife of Sir Politic-Would-Be
  • Peregrine – another, more sophisticated, English traveller
  • Nano – a dwarf, companion of Volpone
  • Androgyno – a hermaphrodite, companion of Volpone
  • Castrone – a eunuch, companion of Volpone
  • The Avocatori – the judges of Venice

2. GORBODUC( play)
  • The Tragedie of Gorboduc, also titled Ferrex  and Porrex, is an English play from 1561.
  • It was first performed by the Inner Temple in 1561 during the Christmas celebration
  • The authors are Thomas Norton and Sackville.
  • The first quarto was published by the bookseller William Griffith in 1565.
  • First verse drama in English to use the blank verse.
  • Gorboduc is disputed by his sons Ferrex and Porrex. The themes of dispute will later become a theme for Ttitus Andronicus and King Lear.

3. VENUS AND ADONIS (POEM)

  • A narrative poem by William Shakespeare in 1593.
  • It is probably Shakespeare's first publication.
  • The poem tells the story of Venus, who is the goddess of Love and her unrequited love. Adonis would rather go hunting than reciprocate.
  • The poem is pastoral and has at times elements of tragic and erotic.
  • It has brilliant descriptions of nature in sestarima, which is a quatrain followed by a couplet( ABAB CC).
  • It was also used by Edmund Spenser and Thomas Lodge.
  • Venus and Adonis was written when the London theatres were closed for a time due to the plague.
  • It was printed by Richard Field and and has a dedication to his patron, Henry Wriothesley.
  • It was inspired by Metamorphoses, a narrative poem by the Latin poet Ovid.

4. SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS

  • Shakespeare's sonnets is the title given to a collection of 154 sonnets by Shakespeare. The first 126 are addressed to a young man; the last 28 to a woman.
  • The sonnets were first published in a 1609 quarto. Sonnets 138 and 144 had previously been published in the 1599 miscellany The Passionate Pilgrim.
  • The publisher Thomas Thorpe entered the book in the Stationer's Register on 20 May 1609.
  • The sonnets include a dedication to one Mr W.H 
  • The sonnets are almost all constructed from three quatrains, which are four-line stanza and a final couplet composed in Iambic Pentameter. 
  • The rhyme scheme is ababacdcdefefgg