Shakespeare's sonnets
The primary source of Shakespeare’s sonnets is a quarto published in 1609 titled "Shakespeare’s Sonnets." It contains 154 sonnets, which are followed by the long poem "A Lover's Complaint". Thirteen copies of the quarto have survived in fairly good shape from the 1609 edition, which is the only edition; there were no other printings. There is evidence in a note on the title page of one of the extant copies that the great Elizabethan actor Edward Alleyn bought a copy in June 1609 for one shilling.
Sonnet 105
Religious themes are also prevalent in this sonnet. The sonnets were published in 1609, composed during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, who re-instituted The Anglican Church in England. One of the tenets of Protestantism was the belief that Catholic practices of worshiping the multitude of Saints and the Virgin Mary were practices of idolatry and were henceforth blasphemous. Hence, Shakespeare's claim against idolatry indicates his love is always directed at the same youth. Other interpretations make the claim that the religious nature of the poem is ironic, that Shakespeare is well aware that the love he describes is indeed idolatry. Scholar Jane Roessner states that "the speaker seems done with all efforts to persuade; now the sonnets are set up at once to deceive and reveal: to appear to be genuine praises ... while in fact covertly revealing the corruption of the friend, and ultimately, of the sonnets themselves which had at first seemed to be stays against corruption". Thus, the purpose behind the sonnet is one of intentional double standards. In addition, Shakespeare is playing with the religious perversity, using the Christian imagery as a way of describing his love.