Student Question
Can you provide a critical note and summary of Henry Howard's sonnet "The Soote Season"?
Quick answer:
Henry Howard's sonnet "The Soote Season" employs a unique structure and syntax, using a rhyme scheme of abababababab aa and hyperbaton, which alters expected word order. The poem describes seasonal changes, using two voltas to shift themes from spring to summer and autumn. Despite the pleasant imagery, a paradox arises in the closing couplet, revealing the speaker's persistent sorrow amidst seasonal joys, highlighting the contrast between external beauty and internal despair.
Two interesting elements stand out in Henry Howard, Earl of
Surrey's sonnet. Surrey constructs the sonnet in three quatrains and an ending
couplet--a structure later borrowed by Spenser and Shakespeare. Surrey's
rhyme scheme though is abababababab aa. In addition, he
employs the rhetorical word scheme technique of hyperbaton,
the modification of expected word order syntax. In each quatrain, there are
instances of general hyperbaton syntax of Subject Object Verb (SOV) instead of
the expected Subject Verb Object (SV/O/C). An example is "The nightingale with
feathers new (S) she (O) sings (V)." The expected syntax would be: "The
nightingale with new feathers (S) sings (V) [no (O)]. Even "feathers new" is a
special class of hyperbaton called anastrophe in
which the normal order of Adjective + Noun is inverted to Noun + Adjective as
in feathers (N) + new (Adj).
Some of these hyperbatonized sentences are quite intricate,...
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for example: "Winter is worn that was the flower's bale." The basic syntax of the sentence as written by Surrey is SVC (Complement to the Subject), yet the noun modifyingthat-clause has been relocated to a position
following the Complement "worn." The substituting paraphrase of this sentence
is: "Winter that now is worn (S) was (V) the flower's
bale [i.e., destroyer] (C)." The ending lines in the couplet are in the
expected SV/O/C pattern, e.g., "and yet my sorrow (S) springs (V)."
This sad sonnet employs the paradox of the Petrarchan
sonnet model. The quatrains talk about the features of the seasons.
Instead of one Petrarchan volta at line 9 to change, or turn, the
theme of the subject, there are two voltas (an innovation Spenser and
Shakespeare later used). The first quatrain describes the pleasures of
spring: "bud and bloom forth brings." The first volta at line 5 turns
to summer's pleasures: "Summer is come." The second volta at line 9
turns the third quatrain to autumn, when the honey bee "mings," or
remembers, having made honey, and to "the flower's bale," winter, that
overwhelmed the flowers but now itself is "worn." The sorrow and
paradox come in the second line of the couplet where we discover that
after watching the pleasantries of the changing seasons for a year, the poetic
speaker's sorrow wells up like a spring:
And thus I see among these pleasant things
Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs.