Some Observations on the Sonnet in Golden-Age Plays and Quevedo's ‘Dramatic’ Sonnets

Abstract

While the characteristic potential of the sonnet is seldom realized by Golden-Age playwrights, is there a poet who has unlocked the sonnet's dramatic possibilities? It is argued that the most fertile area for consideration is to be found in the poetry of Francisco de Quevedo. Whereas Góngora's sonnets seldom lose sight of their potential for the architectural, Quevedo's veer more obviously towards the verbal and the colloquial. If Góngora's amatory sonnets have the plastic arts as a reference point, then Quevedo's evoke more the spoken language, providing a discursive development that could be termed dramatic. To illustrate such effects, the following traits will be examined: the use of direct speech; the recourse to colloquialism and natural speech-patterns; a tendency to hyperbaton and a readiness to disregard the constraints of end-stopped lines; the predilection for aphoristic one-liners to encapsulate a mental or emotional condition; and an argumentative structure that incorporates surprises and twists, so that more than with other practitioners of the sonnet in that period they emerge as movements through rather than moments in time.