Poetry · Chapter
Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music explained
This collection of poems explores themes of love, betrayal, and the fickleness of fortune through various pastoral and courtly vignettes.
What happens
This collection of poems explores themes of love, betrayal, and the fickleness of fortune through various pastoral and courtly vignettes. It includes a tale of a lady torn between a master and a gallant knight, a lover's lament for an unattainable beloved, a shepherd's despair over lost love, advice on wooing women, an invitation to idyllic love, and a meditation on the nightingale's sorrow as a metaphor for human grief and false friendship.
Themes in this chapter
Love and Desire
Central to all poems, exploring unrequited love, the pain of rejection, and the pursuit of affection.
Truth and Deception
Addressed through warnings about women's dissembling, false friends, and the contrast between appearance and reality.
Beauty and Transience
Evident in the fleeting nature of love, youth, and fortune, as well as the nightingale's lament for lost joy.
Characters to notice
- Love
Personified as a force that causes the lover's despair and is declared dead in the shepherd's lament.
- Fortune
Invoked as 'frowning Fortune, cursed, fickle dame' and later as 'fickle Fortune' who beguiles both the nightingale and the speaker.
- Poor Corydon
Mentioned as the shepherd who must live alone after losing his love.
- Jove
Referenced as a god who would swear Juno an Ethiope and turn mortal for love.
- Philomela
Implied through the nightingale's song 'Tereu, tereu!' referencing the myth of Philomela and Tereus.
- King Pandion
Mentioned as dead, leaving the nightingale without friends.
Key passages
“It was a lording's daughter, the fairest one of three, That liked of her master as well as well might be, Till looking on an Englishman, the fair'st that eye could see, Her fancy fell a-turning.”
A nobleman's daughter, the most beautiful of three sisters, was fond of her master until she saw an Englishman, the handsomest ever, and her affections shifted.
Opens the first poem with a love triangle.
“O frowning Fortune, cursed, fickle dame! For now I see Inconstancy More in women than in men remain.”
O scowling, unreliable Fortune! Now I realize that women are more inconstant than men.
Expresses the shepherd's bitterness after losing his love.
“A woman's nay doth stand for nought?”
A woman's refusal means nothing?
Advice suggesting that women's rejections are not to be taken seriously.
“Words are easy, like the wind; Faithful friends are hard to find.”
Words come easily, like the wind, but true friends are rare.
Reflection on the difficulty of finding genuine friendship.