PART I THE INWARD TURN: DOING ‘MIND’ IN ‘CHARACTER’

Doing ‘mind … in character’ had a long and distinguished heritage by the time Shakespeare took up his pen at the turn of the seventeenth century. Indeed, the ‘backward look’ that the words of Sonnet 59 prompt might help to establish the limits of his introspective innovation. How distinctive is Shakespeare's poetic ‘child’? The Bard appears to have set himself a challenge of ‘invention’, and readers are invited to consider whether or not he has laboured successfully. Is this poet's brain ‘beguiled’ or original? It is time to take that ‘backward look’.

For the Renaissance, Petrarch was, of course, a towering landmark along this particular literary pathway and his famous ‘Letter IV’ describing his ascent of Mount Ventoux implicitly reveals his own profound indebtedness to ‘antique’ models, prime among them the colossus St Augustine. ‘Driven by the sole desire to see the famous altitude of this place’ and assisted by the ‘vigour of [his] will’, Petrarch attempts to ascend the highest of the peaks, which the forest dwellers call ‘The Son’.