To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list"Herb & Scott,I've always held that the main clause of this one sentence sonnet, as Herb suggests (if I'm reading you rightly), appears in the third quatrian: "(Haply) I think on thee." It's the implied "then" statement that follows the when statement that opens the sonnet ("When in disgrace ......., [then] I think on thee."). This, it seems to me, is the main point of the entire sonnet and is explained more fully by the final couplet. By the way, I'm not at all convinced by the punctuation, which in Shakespeare is often open to question anyway, especially the comma after line #9, which I think is still a continuation of the previous thought, not an introduction to the main clause that follows it. What do you think?Paul"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction" (_Twelfth Night_ 3.4.127-128).
From: "STAHLKE, HERBERT F" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2009 4:03:57 PM
Subject: Re: Sonnet grammar analysis helpScott,
I think I’d treat “Yet…thee” as a main clause as well, not as adverbial. Yet acts as a coordinating conjunction and so also gets used sentence-initially to set up a contrast with a preceding thought. There’s a single complex adverbial clause comprising the first two quatrains. The third quatrain begins with the main clause of that sentence and is itself a coordinate clause with “and.” The third quatrain is set off by a semi-colon because of the preceding serial commas.. The closing couplet is also set off with a semi-colon, perhaps because of the initial “for” and the close logical link between it and three quatrains. A sonnet in one sentence. Not many poets have pulled this off so well.
Of course, the semicolons are the interpretation of an editor, unidentified. In the 1609 facsimile (http://ia311343.us.archive.org/3/items/shakespearessonn00shakrich/shakespearessonn00shakrich.pdf), all lines but the last end in commas, although the punctuation at the end of the first quatrain is ambiguous. I can’t make out on the screen whether it was meant to be a comma or a period, but I suspect the former.
Herb
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Scott Woods
Sent: 2009-03-18 14:53
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Sonnet grammar analysis help
Adverb clause in italicsIndependent clauses in boldparticipial phrases in < > with participle underlinednoun clauses in [ ]adjective or relative clauses in { }When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
<Wishing me like to one more rich in hope>,
<Featur’d like him>, <like him with friends possess’d>,
<Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope>,
<With [what I most enjoy] contented least>;
Yet <in these thoughts myself almost despising>,
Haply I think on thee,—and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day <arising
From sullen earth>, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
{That then I scorn to change my state with kings}.Does this seem right? Any comments?
Thanks,Scott Woods
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