Sonnet 18
Sonnet 18 is one of the best-known of the 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare.
Homoerotic poetry
The most prominent example in the English language and in the Western canon is that of the sonnets by William Shakespeare. Though some critics have made efforts to preserve Shakespeare's literary credibility by claiming his work to be non-erotic in nature, no critic has disputed that the majority of Shakespeare's sonnets concern explicitly male-male love poetry. The only other Renaissance artist writing in English to do this was the poet Richard Barnfield, who, in "The Affectionate Shepherd" and "Cynthia," wrote homoerotic poetry. Barnfield's poems, furthermore, are now widely accepted as a major influence upon Shakespeare's.