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 day.
It’s National Poetry Month and time to muse about poets who wrote plays
and novels. First and foremost is William Shakespeare who is thought to have
trod the boards in London and
written for about five years before the theaters were closed in Southwark by
the Privy Council in 1592. A ruthless epidemic of the dreaded plague had
struck; the council feared mayhem would erupt amongst the citizens. The
council’s order was extended and the theaters did not reopen until 1594.
Shakespeare joined the Lord Chamberlain’s Men changed to the King’s Men in
1603.
By 1592, Shakespeare was well-known as the author of dramatic plays but
the esteem accorded the plays went to the theatrical company. His name first
appeared on the title page of Richard II and Romeo and Juliet in 1597. When the
theaters closed, Shakespeare turned to writing dramatic poems such as Venus and
Adonis dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, the third Earl of Southampton who became
his patron, there were fifteen editions before 1640. He penned thirty plays and
more than one hundred sonnets.
The Bronte family had writing in their DNA. Sisters Emily, Charlotte,
Anne and brother Branwell all told tales, read extensively, wrote, and during
childhood created a fantasy kingdom and island motivated by Branwell’s toy
soldiers. Emily Bronte is best-known for Wuthering Heights, published in 1847, but her first piece is a poem titled “No coward soul is mine.” The poem, part of collection of three poems was
privately published one year earlier and written by Currer, Ellis and Acton
(the male pseudonyms of the three Bronte sisters). Emily began a second novel
but in 1848, she died of tuberculosis and the manuscript was destroyed.
Thomas Hardy’s mother was responsible for his education. She favored
Latin poets and French romances. He began to write poems at the age of
twenty-two, enjoyed Shakespeare, art and opera but worked for an architectural
firm. He met Emma Lavinia Gifford who encouraged his work and he began to
believe literature was his proper calling.
Hardy, unable to find a readership for his poetry—his first collection
was published in 1898—was advised to write a novel. His first, The Poor Man and the Lady, written in
1867, was rejected by so many publishers he destroyed it. He gained an audience
with Far From the Madding Crowd in
1874 and realized he could now give himself a life as a writer.
He wrote Tess of the D’Ubervilles
in1891 and Jude the Obscure in 1895
and both books with their unconventional morality shocked critics and his
public in that Victorian period. His marriage suffered and it was rumored he
had affairs. Hardy said he would never write another novel and began to publish
several collections of poems. His novels and poems were influenced by
romanticism.
Hardy won worldwide repute and many literary friends by the close of the
19th century, becoming president of the Society of Authors in 1909
and receiving the Order of Merit from King George V. Emma died in 1912 and
Hardy, filled with regret, wrote many poems in her memory published as Poems of 1912-13. He passed on in 1928 and
wanted his body interred in the same grave as Emma’s but his executor insisted
he be place in Westminster Abbey’s Poet’s Corner. An agreement was reached—his
heart was buried with Emma and his ashes in Poet’s Corner.
