William Shakespeare

 

 Author's Note:  This is the poem I wrote to mimic William Shakespeare's (my adopted poet) style of writing.  Since he is well known for his sonnets and his use of an iambic pentameter, I attempted to use that in this piece.  Usually in the poems I do, my lines are much shorter, and I found the iambic pentameter a little tough to do, and I hope it worked. I chose to base this off of Sonnet 18 (Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day) but I used a different topic, which is about the past.  I don't really know why I thought to do this topic, but that is what ended up happening as I began writing it.  Below my poem is Shakespeare's 18th sonnet.  Please leave comments or criticism. 

 18th sonnet:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
 
If I were to gaze through that open door

If I were to gaze through that open door,

I would happen upon that time I knew,

When the earth was large and winds did not roar,

And the span of days never lacked skies of blue,

Days when the suns of gold shown too brightly    

And the tick of a clock never seemed fast,

And tides then are now waves tugging lightly,

Now I find that the earth has shrunk at last,

The moments are more and the dates are less,

I stare into that door I was once in,

But I found this room holds more to address,

 That I will now seek this way to begin,

As long as I can see doors open wide,

At last I grasp that this is the real ride.

• William Shakespeare is an English poet and playwright of the late 16th century and early 17th century.

•  Believed to be born on April 23, 1564 in Stratford-Upon-Avon in England.

• Died April 23, 1616, (age 52)

• Born to John Shakespeare, and Mary Arden, the third child of eight siblings.

• When he was 18, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway,(26)  who influenced many of his sonnets.  (sonnet 130)

• Had three children, Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith.

• None of his children were ever educated.

• At age 11, Hamnet died of the Black Plague.

• The Black Plague affected several other family members and friends.  William references his pain and struggles quite a bit in his writing. (King Lear, Troilus and Cressida, and Tempest)

• Utilized the Iambic Pentameter, which is a meter in poetry that consists of 5 feet of stressed an unstressed syllables. (To be, or not, to be, that is, the ques,tion)

• Well known for his 154 sonnets as well as his 38 plays.

• Plays: Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, Richard III, As You Like It

•  Poems: A lover’s complaint,  The Phoenix and the Turtle, and his works from The Passionate Pilgrim . These poems were believed to be written early in the 17th century, but the exact dates remain unknown.

• In 1599, The Passionate Pilgrim was published.  Shakespeare, along with other poets such as Richard Barnfield, Bartholomew Griffin, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Christopher Marlowe, made up this collection of twenty poems.

• Responsible for the first, second, third, fifth, and seventeenth poems.  The first poem is sonnet 138.

• Influenced by Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmond Spenser, and Philip Sydney.

• Influenced Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, and several other poets.

Key Points:

• The Black Plague had a huge influence on William Shakespeare's life and writing.

• Shakespeare influenced so many poets in history, such as  Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and John Keats.

• Shakespeare utilized the Iambic Pentameter.