sentences:  However, because there are no historical records that such a woman existed, there is not a sufficient evidence to determine whether the woman spoken of in the sonnets was real or fictitious.The sexual pessimism depicted in the sonnets, although extreme, is not unusual to the Christian tradition, especially in ancient times.Beliefs and standards of virginity and sexual abstention can be dated back to Pythagoras, and the views continued to be a tradition through Plato and the Stoics.