Short Paper #2: What Silent Love Hath Writ

Short Paper #2: “What Silent Love Hath Writ”

In Mark Jay Mirsky’s book, The Drama in Shakespeare’s Sonnets (2011), he writes that “It may seem strange to say this, but the Sonnets are essentially dramatic. That is, they are voices speaking to each other.” So for your second short paper, I want you to take this literally: how are the Sonnets both a dramatic/performative text that are “voices speaking to each other?”

Let’s imagine that the ECU Theater department has commissioned you, as their resident dramaturge, to create a very short, one-act play based on the Sonnets. However, the catch is they want this to be a play for two actors, not just a single poet writing to his invisible, silent muse. I want you to choose between 10-12 sonnets that seem to speak to one another, creating not only the skeleton of a plot, but seem to create two distinct characters having a dramatic conversation. The Sonnets can come from anywhere within the 154 Sonnets, and do not have to go in order. For example, Sonnet 1 can respond to Sonnet 116, etc. Since so many of the Sonnets repeat or recycle similar themes and utterances, it’s not hard to see one sonnet responding to a previous one, or even critiquing (or rejecting) another sonnet. Try to find sonnets that work together, advancing a relationship full of love, hope, disappointment, betrayal, rejection, confusion, acceptance, and abandonment (or some of these, anyway).

Your paper should have the following TWO parts:

• PART ONE should introduce us to the two characters in your play. Explain who they are and why you chose these characters. They can be historical or contemporary, old or young, of any profession/background so long as you can see this in the poems. How do these character help explain the mystery of the Sonnets and the secret drama at the heart of the ‘play’?
• PART TWO: Then identify the 10-12 sonnets in your sequence, and explain why you chose these poems; in other words, what story they seem to tell. To help you do this, I want you to briefly close read at least 4-5 poems, showing the back-and-forth conversation between the speakers. Explicating a single line in a poem is sufficient, so long as it reveals themes, characters, and ideas.

REQUIREMENTS

• At least 4 pages double spaced, though more is more than acceptable
• Close reading/quotation from the Sonnets; paraphrasing or summarizing them alone is not acceptable (though you can do this hand-in-hand with close reading). Remember the “heresy of paraphrase.”
• Make sure we see how the characters connect to the Sonnets. For example, if you say the Sonnet drama is between two actors, you have to show how the Sonnets reveal their profession, and why reading the Sonnets as between actors is useful/engaging.
• DUE WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 26th BY 5pm [no class that day]