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Sonnets | Narrative and Dramatic Elements

In the first excerpt, Heather Dubrow acknowledges the presence of narrative and dramatic elements in Shakespeare's sonnets but asserts that most of Shakespeare's sonnets are interior monologues in the lyrical mode. In the second excerpt, Michael Cameron Andrews maintains that many of the sonnets involving the young man are dramatic in the sense that they are profoundly dynamic depictions of a mind at war with itself.

There is little question that Shakespeare's sonnets are essentially lyrical—that is, short verses expressing thoughts or feelings. There is critical debate, however, about the extent to which they contain narrative or dramatic elements. Most twentieth-century commentators find little more than a skeletal "story" in these verses. Kenneth Muir, for instance, summarized what he termed "the basic facts" of the sonnets in a single sentence. He reminded readers that these verses do not represent a novel in poetic form, yet he also acknowledged that Shakespeare convinces us that the...

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