Advanced Shakespeare 13 - March 3, 2020 Last class on Macbeth: sonnets and then "My way of life is fallen...."

 A class where we finally talk about the whole soliloquy, with which I am obsessed, in which Macbeth calls or Seyton and considers how his way of life is fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf."  We get there by means of Sonnet 12, but that means talking about the sonnets: first the nature of sonnet sequences from Petrarch through Wyatt to Sidney and Shakespeare, then of course (via Wyatt) about Tottel's miscellany, and then a discussion of Sonnet 73 and its echoes of Macbeth's soliloquy, and ultimately about the nature of interruption, here as well as in Lear:

Prithee, go in thyself: seek thine own ease:

This tempest will not give me leave to ponder

On things would hurt me more. But I'll go in.

 

To the Fool

In, boy; go first. You houseless poverty,--

Nay, get thee in. I'll pray, and then I'll sleep.

Fool goes in

 

Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these? 

 

Macbeth interrupts himself to call for his last loyal servant; Lear to dismiss him.