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In trying to get to the root Shakespeare’s sonnets, one literally must go on a ceaseless scavenger hunt, from book to book, article to article and scholar to scholar. Perhaps we the modern critic can be blamed for going way out on limbs making speculations in what others have classified as “over analyzing”. Although this is not necessarily the case, one can’t help but be confused when each writer takes you on a detour from the one idea unto another. And so this scavenger hunt seems to get no answers as many of the ideas are in fact credible. And so perhaps the best thing to do must be to understand just more than one perspective to be able to come up with ones own. And so the sonnets go from real to deliberately mocking, or just literary fun. Throughout the 16th century, the Petrarchian sonnet style became the backbone and structure rigorously followed by all British sonneteers. However although this literary form of excess flattery and hyperbole reached its hay-day in the 16th century, it was also a trend that began to wear off by the end of the same century. Essentially, the Petrarchian sonnet is composed “of 1) comparison by simile and or metaphor 2) hierarchizing, and 3) valuing by a standard.”(Vendler, 557), all of whom heterogeneously fuse together to form the Blazon. The popularity of the blazon during the 16th Century can be credited to have brought an extension of the Medieval styles of courtly love into the Renaissance. The blazon is in essence an excess form of flattery used in wooing the virtuous and unattainable woman, by mode of the sonnet form. From this style a myriad of conventions were formed, that had become all too common and for some even rather boring. The woman, whose eyes went far beyond the luster of the sun, and whose cheeks captured the rosy pigment and soft texture of a single rose petal. This mode of adulating the woman had begun to seem repetitive, foolish, asinine and unreal. It wasn’t long till this style would be demoted, and so in writing as early as 1590, the satirical Petrarchian sonnet/ anti blazon begins to emerge, amongst whose followers would be William Shakespeare. There are those whom say that some of Shakespeare’s Dark Lady Sonnets can be seen as a direct mockery on the style that has in modern day been termed the “Petrarchian” sonnet. Others claim that he may not have been altogether familiar with Petrarch’s sonnets enough to have been able to form a collection of satires parodying him (Weiser, 140). And so it is believed that his sonnets became a mockery more so on the style itself and the literary cliché that had been formed amongst his contemporaries. However some will go as far as to argue that no such form of mockery is being employed in the description of his mistress in such sonnets as in 130.
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