ABSTRACT

The chronological progression of Keats's stylistic craftsmanship and turning at once to the odes, some remarks should be made about the sonnets which Keats wrote after the close of 1817. It is significant that the remaining sixteen sonnets are written in the Shakespearean rhyme-scheme which had been first introduced by Surrey, which had been drawn upon as their basic form by Daniel, Drayton, Griffin, Fletcher, and Barnes, Smith, Constable, and many other Elizabethan sonneteers. In his employment of the sonnet-stanza, Shakespeare secured a unity and integrity of structure beyond that of any contemporary sonneteer except occasionally Drayton. His sonnets almost invariably begin with an end consciously in view. The later sonnet of Keats was at best an incidental and occasional form. If there was in Keats a vein which may be designated as pre-eminently lyrical, that vein was too richly grave and weightily majestic in temper to find adequate expression within the brief, and for him faulty, rhyme-patterns of the sonnet.