YOU ARE EXPECTED TO WORK INDEPENDENTLY ON THIS EXAM!

General instructions and valuable hints: Read carefully!

There are two parts to this final, Part I and Part II. You should end up with three essays in all, totalling four to five pages.

The final should be typed, double spaced, with standard margins and type size.

The only materials you should use for this final are your edition of the sonnets and the other readings for the course. No other sources allowed. If you benefit from a gloss in your edition, note that parenthetically like this: (gloss). Also, at the end of your final, let me know what edition you used. You don't need to give full bibliographic information for any of the other course readings (if you use them) but do let me know relevant page, line or act/scene/line numbers if you quote or refer to any of these texts, so that I can find the passage.

To prepare for this final, look over your class notes and marginal notes in your edition of the sonnets, your reading responses and the readings on the syllabus to help jog your memory about issues raised in the class. For part II, read the sonnets a number of times to notice new detail. Come back to the sonnets at different times--the next day, if possible.

If you have further questions, please send me email: rmatz@gmu.edu.

Part I
Write two essays responding to two out of three of the following questions. Each essay should be 1 to 1 and 1/4 pages. Refer to sonnets to provide evidence for your argument. Make sure, however, to quote only brief phrases or give brief paraphrases, since each of these essays is quite short and since I'll give more credit to essays that can give multiple perspectives on the question. I'll evaluate these essays based on your demonstration of your knowledge of the sonnets (i.e. you quote or refer to sonnets highly relevant to the question you've picked) and your mastery of course concepts.

1) The Renaissance sonnet is highly conventional, both in the strictness of the form itself, and in the attitudes expressed in it. How does Shakespeare address the conventionality of the sonnet?

2) The attitude to the dark lady and the young man seems strikingly different. What common concerns, however, connect the dark lady and young man subsequences, even if the attitude toward those concerns seems to differ?

3) Is the speaker of the sonnets ambitious? What kind(s) of ambition? What does he say about ambition?

Part II
Write a 2 to 2 and 1/2 page essay connecting two of the following sonnets together, reading them closely, in terms of an issue or issues we've discussed in class. You'll probably want to quote and discuss key words, phrases and even perhaps lines in the sonnets you choose, but don't quote the whole sonnets (or there goes half your essay)! If you find it helpful, you can use the question that you did not respond to in part I as a starting point. But you do not have to. You might also find it helpful to draw on other reading we did in the class (e.g. historical context like The Courtier, critical essays like De Grazia's or other literary texts like Othello). If you do so, however, make sure that the reference is sufficiently brief so that you can keep your focus on the two sonnets. I'll evaluate this essay based on your demonstration of your skills as a close reader of the sonnets, and your mastery of course concepts.

17

Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were filled with your most high deserts?
Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb,
Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say, "This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne'er touched earthly faces."
So should my papers, yellowed with their age,
Be scorned like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be termed a poet's rage
And stretched meter of an antique song.
But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice, in it and in my rhyme.
 

40

Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all;
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;
All mine was thine before thou hadst this more.
Then if for my love thou my love receivest,
I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest;
But yet be blamed, if thou this self deceivest
By willful taste of what thyself refusest.
I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,
Although thou steal thee all my poverty;
And yet love knows it is a greater grief
To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury.
Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,
Kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes.
 

54

O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
That rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odor which doth in it live.
That canker blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
Whem summer's breath their masked bud discloses.
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwooed and unrespected fade,
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odors made.
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall vade, by verse distills your truth.
 

127

In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name;
But now is black beauty's successive heir
And beauty slandered with a bastard shame.
For since each hand hath put on nature's power,
Fairing the foul with art's false borrowed face,
Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black,
Her brows so suited, and they mourners seem
At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,
Sland'ring creation with a false esteem.
Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe
That every tongue says beauty should look so.
 

148

O me, what eyes hath love put in my head,
Which have no correspondence with true sight!
Or, if they have, where is my judgement fled,
That censures falsely what they see aright?
If that be fair wereon my false eyes dote,
What means the world to say it is not so?
If it be not, then love doth well denote
Love's eye is not so true as all men's "no."
How can it? O, how can love's eye be true,
That is so vexed with watching and with tears?
No marvel then though I mistake my view;
The sun itself see not till heaven clears.
O cunning love, with tears thou keep'st me blind,
Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find.

And don't forget... If you haven't yet given me another copy of your sonnet for a 473 class anthology (to be put on reserve for the summer) why not include it along with your final?  You can take your name off the sonnet, if you wish.