How many sonnets did Shakespeare write?
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 54
Sonnet 54 is one of 154 sonnets published in 1609 by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is considered one of the Fair Youth sequence. This sonnet is a continuation of the theme of inner substance versus outward show by noting the distinction between roses and canker blooms; only roses can preserve their inner essence by being distilled into perfume. The young man's essence or substance can be preserved by verse.
Hamnet Shakespeare
Michael Wood suggests in "In Search of Shakespeare" that sonnet 33 might have nothing to do with the so-called "Fair Youth" sonnets, that it alludes to the death of the poet's son, Hamnet in 1596 at age 11, and that there is an implied pun on ""sun"" and ""son"": ""Even so my sun one early morn did shine, with all triumphant splendour on my brow; but out, alack, he was but one hour mine, the region cloud hath mask'd him from me now"". If this is the case the link of sonnet 33 with sonnet 34, sonnet 35 and sonnet 36 would be entirely coincidental and spurious. Note that in sonnet 33 (1) there is no overt "you" or "thou" (contrary to most of the sonnets and in particular to sonnets 34, 35 and 36 which all three use "thou") and (2) there is no mention of the supposed "fault" committed by the addressee towards the poet (as in sonnets 34 and 35) nor of the supposed "guilt" borne by the poet which may affect the addressee's reputation (as in sonnet 36).
Sonnet 42
Sonnet 42 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a part of the Fair Youth section of the sonnets addressed to an unnamed young man.
Sonnet 10
Sonnet 10 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a procreation sonnet within the Fair Youth sequence.
Sonnet 33
Shakespeare's Sonnet 33 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. This sonnet is the first of what are sometimes called the estrangement sonnets, numbers 33–36: poems concerned with the speaker's response to an unspecified "sensual fault" mentioned in (35) committed by his beloved.
Sonnet 107
Sonnet 107 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.
Shakespeare's sonnets
Three sonnets are found in "Romeo and Juliet": The prologue to the play (“Two households, both alike in dignity…”), the prologue to the second act (“Now old desire doth in his death-bed lie…”), and set in the form of dialogue at the moment when Romeo and Juliet meet:
Petrarch's and Shakespeare's sonnets
Although Petrarch is accredited with perfection of the sonnet, Shakespeare still made changes in sonnet form and composition 200 years after Petrarch's death. While Petrarch's sonnets focused mainly on one hub, Shakespeare developed many subjects within his themes such as insomnia, slave of love, blame, dishonesty, and sickness. Despite creating complicated plots, Shakespeare also manages to place ulterior motifs among his two lovers, building new poetic form where Petrarch left off.
Sonnet 79
Sonnet 79 is one of 154 sonnets published by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare in 1609. It is part of the Fair Youth sequence, and the second sonnet of the Rival Poet sequence.
Sonnet 56
Sonnet 56 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. The exact date of its composition is unknown, it is thought that the Fair Youth sequence was written in the first half of the 1590s and was published with the rest of the sonnets in the 1609 Quarto.
Sonnet 30
Sonnet 30 is one of the 154 sonnets written by the English poet and playwright William Shakespeare. It was published in the Quarto in 1609. It is also part of the Fair Youth portion of the Shakespeare Sonnet collection where he writes about his affection for an unknown young man. While it is not known exactly when Sonnet 30 was written, most scholars agree that it was written between 1595 and 1600. It is written in Shakespearean form, comprising fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, divided into three quatrains and a couplet.
Sonnet 74
Sonnet 74 is one of 154 sonnets published by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare in 1609. It is one of the Fair Youth sequence.
Sonnet 131
Sonnet 131 is a sonnet written by William Shakespeare and was first published in a 1609 quarto edition titled "Shakespeare's sonnets". It is a part of the "Dark Lady" sequence (consisting of sonnets 127–52), which are addressed to an unknown woman usually assumed to possess a dark complexion.
Sonnet 147
Sonnet 147 is one of 154 sonnets written by English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. Sonnet 147 is written from the perspective of a poet who regards the love he holds for his mistress and lover as a sickness, and more specifically, as a fever. The sonnet details the internal battle the poet has between his reason (or head) and the love he has for his mistress (his heart). As he realizes his love is detrimental to his health and stability, perhaps even fatal, the poet's rationality attempts to put an end to the relationship. Eventually, however, the battle between the poet's reason and his love comes to an end. Unable to give up his lover, the poet gives up rationale and his love becomes all consuming, sending him to the brink of madness.
Sonnet 109
Sonnet 109 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
He and his friend Sir Thomas Wyatt were the first English poets to write in the sonnet form that Shakespeare later used, and Surrey was the first English poet to publish blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) in his translation of the second and fourth books of Virgil's "Aeneid". 
Together, Wyatt and Surrey, due to their excellent translations of Petrarch's sonnets, are known as "Fathers of the English Sonnet". While Wyatt introduced the sonnet into English, it was Surrey who gave them the rhyming meter and the division into quatrains that now characterises the sonnets variously named English, Elizabethan or Shakespearean sonnets.
Shakespeare's sonnets
Apart from rhyme, and considering only the arrangement of ideas, and the placement of the volta, a number of sonnets maintain the two-part organization of the Italian sonnet. In that case the term "octave" and "sestet" are commonly used to refer to the sonnet’s first eight lines followed by the remaining six lines. There are other line-groupings as well, as Shakespeare finds inventive ways with the content of the fourteen line poems.
Sonnets for an Old Century
The Romantic style of this play makes it almost seem like these characters are reading their own personal eulogies. It is not the typical through line of a play a reader would expect. It does not necessarily have a specific beginning, middle and end. It is written and published as an anthology. There is in fact something beautiful about this writing that displays how the style can, in a way, "make it old" and "make it new," because of the romantic element of having their stories be told in a form of sonnets. A sonnet is considered a poem. Traditionally, sonnets are meant to be a stanza of fourteen lines, that are written in iambic pentameter. Also, originally "the traditional subject of the sonnet has primarily been "Love"." William Shakespeare, is the first and most well known writer for classical sonnets. Since Shakespeare's era it is known that politicians and artists do not necessarily always see the world through the same lens. This has provided some conflict in the past. Although, through Shakespeare's incorporation of romanticism in his texts it supplied a path in which entrepreneurs and artists could share and adapt similar points of view.
Sonnet 123
Sonnet 123 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.
Sonnet 86
Sonnet 86 is one of 154 sonnets first published by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare in the Quarto of 1609. It is the final poem of the Rival Poet group of the Fair Youth sonnets in which Shakespeare writes about an unnamed young man and a rival poet competing for the youth's favor. The exact date of its composition is unknown, it has been suggest that the Rival Poet series may have been written between 1598 and 1600.
Sonnet 134
Sonnet 134 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English poet and playwright William Shakespeare. In it, the speaker confronts the Dark Lady after learning that she has seduced the Fair Youth.
Shakespeare's sonnets
The title of the quarto, "Shakespeare’s Sonnets", is consistent with the entry in the Stationer Register. The title appears in upper case lettering on the title page, where it is followed by the phrase “Neuer before Imprinted”. The title also appears every time the quarto is opened. That the author’s name in a possessive form is part of the title sets it apart from all other sonnet collections of the time, except for one — Sir Philip Sidney’s posthumous 1591 publication that is titled, "Syr. P.S. his Astrophel and Stella", which is considered one of Shakespeare’s most important models. Sidney’s title may have inspired Shakespeare, particularly if the “W.H.” of Shakespeare’s dedication is Sidney’s nephew and heir, William Herbert. The idea that the persona referred to as the speaker of the Shakespeare’s sonnets might be Shakespeare himself, is aggressively repudiated by scholars, however, the title of the quarto does seem to encourage that kind of speculation.
Sonnet 99
Sonnet 99 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. The sonnet is generally grouped with the preceding two in the sequence, with which it shares a dominant trope and image set: the beloved is described in terms of, and judged superior to, nature and its beauties.
Sonnet 41
Sonnet 41 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a part of the Fair Youth section of the sonnets addressed to an unnamed young man. While the exact date of the composition is unknown, it was originally published in the 1609 Quarto along with the rest of the sonnets.
Sonnet 31
Sonnet 31 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a sonnet within the Fair Youth sequence. Developing an idea introduced at the end of Sonnet 30, this poem figures the young man's superiority in terms of the possession of all the love the speaker has ever experienced.
English Romantic sonnets
The sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines that follows a strict rhyme scheme and specific structure, the invention of which is credited to the thirteenth century Italian poet Giacomo Da Lentini, and was subsequently made famous by Petrarch. Thomas Wyatt, in the early 16th century, introduced the sonnet into England. However, it was the Earl of Surrey who developed the rhyme scheme – "abab cdcd efef gg" – which now characterizes the English or Shakespearean sonnet.
Sonnet 61
Sonnet 61 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.
Sonnet 33
Although Sonnet 33 is considered a part of the group of Shakespearean sonnets addressed to a young man, there have been claims that the third quatrain of sonnet 33 may have been co-addressed to Shakespere's only son, Hamnet, who died in 1596 at the age of 11. As noted by Mark Schwartzberg of New York University, Shakespearean biographer Anthony Holden suggests that the death of Hamnet was "one of the catalysts that sparked the change to a darker tone in his [Shakespeare] work, a tone that increasingly reflected personal grief". This change in tone is found in "Hamlet", "The Winter's Tale", and "King John", which contained several, unexpected emotional moments.
According to Scwhartzberg, the sense of betrayal and disappointment that permeates throughout the poem from the speaker isn't necessarily directed at the fair, young youth that this sonnet is thought to be addressed to, but rather at God or Fate for taking the life of Hamnet too soon. Schwartzberg believes that there is a pun on the word "sun" which, when replaced with "son", provides the poem a tone of grievous loss. "Even so my sun one early morn did shine" (9) may be in reference to the brevity of Shakespeare's own son; "one early morn" being the phrase that captures this notion. This line combined with line 11 and 12 respectively, "But out alack, he was but one hour mine, / The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now" demonstrates Shakespeare's grief over the loss of his son as a father who felt like the existence of his son's life was but "one hour".
Michael Wood also suggests the allusion of the third quatrain of Sonnet 33 to the death of the poet's son with an implied pun on "sun". In "In Search of Shakespeare", he suggests that this sonnet might have nothing to do with the so-called "Fair Youth" sonnets, that it alludes to the death of the poet's son, Hamnet in 1596 at age 11, and that there is an implied pun on ""sun"" and ""son"": ""Even so my sun one early morn did shine, with all triumphant splendour on my brow; but out, alack, he was but one hour mine, the region cloud hath mask'd him from me now"". If this is the case the link of this sonnet with sonnets 34, 35 and 36 would be entirely coincidental and spurious.
Kerverne Smith believes that the emotional effect that Hamnet's death had on Shakespeare resulted in recurring features found in Shakespeare's later plays, which fit into one of five motifs: "the resurrected child or sibling, androgynous and twin-like figures, a growing emphasis on father-daughter relationships; paternal guilt; family division and reunion". If this notion is to be true, then sonnet 33 could be that of the "paternal guilt" motif. 
In other readings of the third quatrain, it should complete the metaphor of the young man as a sun, but fails to commit, "my sun" being a step removed from "my friend" or "my love". This requires the reader to allow the speaker some leeway toward the metaphor, not to search to deeply into the "nature of the region cloud or its masking". The third quatrain restates the first two quatrains in the same metaphoric terms.
Sonnet 150
Sonnet 150 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is considered a Dark Lady sonnet, as are all from 127 to 152. Nonetheless 150 is an outlier, and in some ways appears to belong more to the Fair Youth.
Sonnet 90
Sonnet 90 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.
Sonnet 26
Sonnet 26 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare, and is a part of the Fair Youth sequence.
Sonnet 97
Sonnet 97 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. It is the first of three sonnets describing a separation between the speaker and the beloved.
Same-sex intimacy
The most notable example of frequent and common instances of courtly love occurs in the writings of William Shakespeare. Shakespeare wrote many sonnets to young men that he admired, praising their beauty, intelligence and virility. He addressed sonnets 1-126 to "Fair Youth"—an individual who is commonly interpreted to be male—and later, in Sonnet 20, refers to the boy as the "master-mistress of [his] passion." Additional examples of Shakespeare writing of same-sex intimacy and courtly love are within his procreation sonnets. In these poems, Shakespeare encourages a young man to marry and have children to preserve his beauty, using loving and occasionally romantic language to communicate his message. Additionally, it is believed by many scholars that Shakespeare's famous Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?") is also about a man, as he dedicated his book of sonnets to an unidentified "Mr. W.H."
Sonnet 15
Also known as "When I consider every thing that grows," Sonnet 15 is one of English playwright and poet William Shakespeare's acclaimed 154 sonnets. It is a contained within the Fair Youth sequence, considered traditionally to be from sonnet 1-126 "which recount[s] the speaker's idealized, sometimes painful love for a femininely beautiful, well-born male youth". In another subcategory the sonnet is also contained within what is known as the Procreation sonnets.
Sonnet 60
Sonnet 60 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young beloved.
Sonnet 23
Sonnet 23 is one of a sequence of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare, and is a part of the Fair Youth sequence.
Sonnet 9
Sonnet 9 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a procreation sonnet within the Fair Youth sequence.
Sonnet 51
Sonnet 51 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is part of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. It is a continuation of the argument from Sonnet 50.
Sonnet 8
Sonnet 8 by William Shakespeare empathizes with the subject, who is against the idea of marriage. The young man, the subject of the sonnet, is chided for choosing to be single. The poet uses comparisons with music and marriage, likening the "true concord of well-tuned sounds" to a marriage. It is appropriate that Sonnet 8, a sonnet of musical descant, is placed as the 8th sonnet, since an "eight" is a "true concord." Shakespeare does this to emphasize the beauty and importance of having a family. The sonnet emphasizes the notion that the subject will not reach true harmony if he does not settle down with a wife and children. His life will be in discord if he chooses to continue being single. It is among the string of procreation sonnets written by Shakespeare. The procreation sonnets are sonnets 1-17. All share the theme of urging a young man to marry and have children, insisting they are key to a harmonious life.
Shakespeare's sonnets
“A Lover’s Complaint” begins with a young woman weeping at the edge of a river, into which she throws torn-up letters, rings, and other tokens of love. An old man nearby approaches her and asks the reason for her sorrow. She responds by telling him of a former lover who pursued, seduced, and finally abandoned her. She recounts in detail the speech her lover gave to her which seduced her. She concludes her story by conceding that she would fall for the young man's false charms again.
In his plays, Shakespeare himself seemed to be a satiric critic of sonnets – the allusions to them are often scornful. Then Shakespeare went on to create one of the longest sonnet-sequences of his era, a sequence that took some sharp turns away from the tradition.
Sonnet 12
Sonnet 12 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a procreation sonnet within the Fair Youth sequence.
Louis P. Bénézet
His hobby was the study of the so-called Shakespeare authorship question. He became an advocate for Oxfordian theory. In his book "Shakespeare and de Vere" (1937) he propounded a modified version of Percy Allen's Prince Tudor theory, but did not accept Allen's belief that Oxford had a son by Queen Elizabeth I. However, he argued that the sonnets were written to an actor son of the Earl's, who performed under the name "William Shakespeare". In "The Six Loves of Shake-Speare" (1959), he argued that the sonnets were addressed to six different individuals. He also devised the "Bénézet test" of conjoining lines from Oxford's and Shakespeare's verse to see whether the difference was noticeable to the reader.
British literature
Shakespeare also popularized the English sonnet, which made significant changes to Petrarch's model. A collection of 154 by sonnets, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality, were first published in a 1609 quarto.
Besides Shakespeare the major poets of the early 17th century included the metaphysical poets John Donne (1572–1631) and George Herbert (1593–1633). Influenced by continental Baroque, and taking as his subject matter both Christian mysticism and eroticism, Donne's metaphysical poetry uses unconventional or "unpoetic" figures, such as a compass or a mosquito, to reach surprise effects.
Sonnet 89
Sonnet 89 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.
Sonnet 46
Sonnet 46 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. "Sonnet 46" is continued in "Sonnet 47".
Sonnet 85
Sonnet 85 is one of 154 sonnets published by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare in 1609. It's part of the Fair Youth sequence, and the eighth sonnet of the Rival Poet group.
William Shakespeare
Few details of Shakespeare's sexuality are known. At 18, he married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway, who was pregnant. Susanna, the first of their three children, was born six months later on 26 May 1583. Over the centuries, some readers have posited that Shakespeare's sonnets are autobiographical, and point to them as evidence of his love for a young man. Others read the same passages as the expression of intense friendship rather than romantic love. The 26 so-called "Dark Lady" sonnets, addressed to a married woman, are taken as evidence of heterosexual liaisons.
Sonnet 145
This sonnet has generally been considered by critics to be one of Shakespeare's slightest works. Its fairly simple language and syntax, along with the oddity of the meter, have led to suggestions that it was written much earlier than the other, more mature, sonnets. Gurr states,
I have not been able to find a single example in the period up to 1582 of an octosyllabic sonnet...no poet besides Shakespeare in this one curious poem wrote an octosyllabic sonnet. (225)
Holy Sonnets
The Holy Sonnets—also known as the Divine Meditations or Divine Sonnets—are a series of nineteen poems by the English poet John Donne (1572–1631). The sonnets were first published in 1633—two years after Donne's death. The poems are sonnets and are predominantly in the style and form prescribed by Renaissance Italian poet Petrarch (or Francesco Petrarca) (1304–1374) in which the sonnet consisted of two quatrains (four-line stanzas) and a sestet (a six-line stanza). However, several rhythmic and structural patterns as well as the inclusion of couplets are elements influenced by the sonnet form developed by English poet and playwright William Shakespeare (1564–1616).
Sonnet 103
Sonnet 103 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.
Sonnet 128
Shakespeare's sonnets were published in 1609 and were the last of his non-dramatic works to be composed. It is not certain when each of the sonnets were written but there is evidence to suggest that Shakespeare wrote his sonnets on a private scale. William Wordsworth even suggests that the sonnets were how Shakespeare "unlocked his heart". There are only two sonnets that Shakespeare writes that are specifically about music, and those are Sonnet 8 and Sonnet 128. No one is certain if Shakespeare wrote the sonnets in order or if they should form a complete sequence. However it is clear that they offer an insight that "Shakespeare's capacity to represent the imaginative states of other people".
Sexuality of William Shakespeare
Other possible evidence of other affairs are that twenty-six of Shakespeare's "Sonnets" are love poems addressed to a married woman (the so-called 'Dark Lady').
Sonnet 104
Sonnet 104 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.
Sonnet 110
The sonnet is a confession of the poets committed sins and promiscuity, which quickly escalates to his confession of love to the young man. With Shakespeare's heavy use of double meanings to words have scholars perplexed as to whether the sonnet is about Shakespeare's career as an actor or a confession of love to the young man. The sonnet is written in traditional Shakespearean sonnet form consisting of 14 lines with Iambic Pentameter and ending with a couplet.
Sonnet 71
Sonnet 71 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. It focuses on the speaker's aging and impending death in relation to his young lover.
Sonnet 57
Rhian Williams asserts, "In literary value Shakespeare's sonnets are notably unequal. Many reach levels of lyric melody and meditative energy that are hardly to be matched elsewhere in poetry". His 57th sonnet is such a one and epitomises Shakespeare's signature sonnet structure as it conveys the influences of the 14th-century poet, Petrarch, and showcases again Shakespeare's talent. In fact, Danijela Kambasković-Sawers generalises, "The sonnet sequence genre constructs a double sense of immediacy: drawing on the lyricism of its constituent sonnets, it also often generates a perception of a personal narrative when the sequence is read from beginning to end". She goes on to make a comparison between the two poets and the structures of their subsequent sonnets when he states, "Sonnet sequences like Petrarch's or Shakespeare's make possible a narrative-by-episode". Kambasković-Sawers elaborates on the subject of Shakespeare’s controversial yet ambiguous speaker and asserts that while ambiguous speakers were characteristic of both Petrarch's work and a signature of the Elizabethan time period, Shakespeare's differed. "The difference between Shakespeare's and other great Elizabethan sonnet sequences lies in the degree and complexity of his main character's ambiguity, as well as in the skill with which this complexity is managed. Shakespeare's contradictory speaker stands as one of the most important elements of the artistic impact and lasting vitality of the sequence".
Sonnet 44
Sonnet 44 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. "Sonnet 44" is continued in "Sonnet 45".
Sonnet 142
Sonnet 142 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare.
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.
Sonnet 56
Sonnet 56 is part of the Fair Youth sequence. This sequence spans sonnets 1-126. Furthermore, the first 77 sonnets are called the "Procreation" section, the rest 78-126 the "Rival Poet" and 127-154 is the "Dark Lady" section. In the Fair Youth section Shakespeare details his feelings towards the young man that he is in love with. This sonnet was published along with the rest in 1609 in Quarto. There is a debate as to why the sonnets were published in 1609. One theory affirmed by Duncan-Jones, is that these sonnets were published in order to "put right the wrong done" by the unauthorized publishing by Jaggard in 1599. They are thought to have been written long before the publication in 1609. Some researchers have used clues from Sonnet 107 with its allusions to Queen Elizabeth to date it to 1596. If the sonnets were written in the order that they appear in Quarto, then it is plausible that some were written before 1596.
Sonnet 148
Sonnet 148 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare.
Sonnet 1
Sonnet 1 is the first in a series of 154 sonnets written by William Shakespeare and published in 1609 by Thomas Thorpe. Nineteenth-century critics thought Thorpe might have published the poems without Shakespeare's consent, but modern scholars don't agree and consider that Thorpe maintained a good reputation. Sonnet 1 is the first of the "Fair Youth" sonnets, in which an unnamed young man is being addressed by the speaker. Patrick Cheney comments on this: "Beginning with a putatively male speaker imploring a beautiful young man to reproduce, and concluding with a series of poems – the dark lady poems – that affiliate consummated heterosexual passion with incurable disease, Shakespeare's Sonnets radically and deliberately disrupt the conventional narrative of erotic courtship". Sonnet 1 serves as being a kind of introduction to the rest of the sonnets, and may have been written later than the ones that follow. The "procreation sonnets" (sonnets 1 – 17) urge this youth to not waste his beauty by failing to marry or reproduce. Joseph Pequigney notes: "... the opening movement give[s the] expression to one compelling case... The first mode of preservation entertained is procreation, which is urged without letup in the first fourteen poems and twice again".
Sonnet 109
Sonnet 109 was originally published in 1609 with the rest of Shakespeare's sonnets as a collection dedicated to "Mr. W.H." and now referred to as the 1609 Quarto or Quarto 1. Sonnet 109 belongs to the group of sonnets (1-126) that are commonly categorized as "sonnets to a fair youth." This group of sonnets, according to Arthur F. Marotti, "consists of poems written to a younger man who is clearly treated as a patron". The identity of this young patron, who is likely the "Mr. W.H." to whom Shakespeare dedicated the sonnets, is considered by many historians and Shakespearean analysts to be Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton. Martin Green supports this hypothesis with the evidence that Shakespeare never wrote dedications in of his works to any person besides Wriothesley. Shakespeare's relationship with this young man as interpreted from this group of sonnets is not entirely clear; his words of love and affection could be a bid for more favor, or as Judith Kegan Gardiner maintains, a true love that surprised and startled Shakespeare. Even if Shakespeare's sonnets are accepted as an expression of genuine love, there is still no consensus in academia whether this love was sexual in nature. Many critics argue that Shakespeare was homosexual, while others maintain that he was heterosexual, including the noteworthy Shakespeare analyst A. L. Rowse, who has claimed "Shakespeare is the bawdiest of the Elizabethan dramatists, with the natural bawdy of the highly sexed normal heterosexual".
Sonnet 22
Sonnet 22 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare, and is a part of the Fair Youth sequence.
Sonnet 149
Sonnet 149 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare.
Sonnet 62
Sonnet 62 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, addressed to the young man with whom Shakespeare shares an intimate but tormented connection. This sonnet brings together a number of themes that run through the cycle: the speaker's awareness of social and other differences between him and the beloved; the power and limitations of poetic art; and the puzzling sense in which love erases the boundaries between individuals.
Sonnet 41
Shakespeare's sonnets conform to the English or Shakespearean sonnet form. The form consists of fourteen lines structured as three quatrains and a couplet, rhyming "abab cdcd efef gg" and written in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. While Shakespeare's versification maintains the English sonnet form, Shakespeare often rhetorically alludes to the form of Petrarchan sonnets with an octave (two quatrains) followed by a sestet (six lines), between which a "turn" or "volta" occurs, which signals a change in the tone, mood, or stance of the poem. The first line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:
William Shakespeare
Published in 1609, the "Sonnets" were the last of Shakespeare's non-dramatic works to be printed. Scholars are not certain when each of the 154 sonnets was composed, but evidence suggests that Shakespeare wrote sonnets throughout his career for a private readership. Even before the two unauthorised sonnets appeared in "The Passionate Pilgrim" in 1599, Francis Meres had referred in 1598 to Shakespeare's "sugred Sonnets among his private friends". Few analysts believe that the published collection follows Shakespeare's intended sequence. He seems to have planned two contrasting series: one about uncontrollable lust for a married woman of dark complexion (the "dark lady"), and one about conflicted love for a fair young man (the "fair youth"). It remains unclear if these figures represent real individuals, or if the authorial "I" who addresses them represents Shakespeare himself, though Wordsworth believed that with the sonnets "Shakespeare unlocked his heart".
Sonnet 120
Sonnet 120 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.
Sonnet 19
Sonnet 19 is one of 154 sonnets published by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare in 1609. It is considered by some to be the final sonnet of the initial procreation sequence. The sonnet addresses time directly, as it allows time it's great power to destroy all things in nature, but the poem forbids time to erode the young man's fair appearance. The poem casts time in the role of a poet holding an “antique pen”. The theme is redemption, through poetry, of time's inevitable decay. Though there is compunction in the implication that the young man himself will not survive time’s effects, because redemption brought by the granting of everlasting youth is not actual, but rather ideal or poetic.
Sonnet 93
Sonnet 93 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.
Sonnet 57
Sonnet 57 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. "Sonnet 57" is connected with "Sonnet 58" which pursues the theme of the poet as a slave of the beloved.
Sonnet 119
Sonnet 119 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.
Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship
Oxford was born in 1550, and was between 40 and 53 years old when he presumably would have written the sonnets. Shakespeare was born in 1564. Even though the average life expectancy of Elizabethans was short, being between 26 and 39 was not considered old. In spite of this, age and growing older are recurring themes in the Sonnets, for example, in Sonnets 138 and 37. In his later years, Oxford described himself as "lame". On several occasions, the author of the sonnets also described himself as lame, such as in Sonnets 37 and 89.
Petrarch's and Shakespeare's sonnets
William Shakespeare utilized the sonnet in love poetry of his own, employing the sonnet structure conventionalized by English poets Wyatt and Surrey. This structure, known as the English or Shakespearean sonnet, consists of three quatrains and a concluding couplet. The rhyme scheme is a simple ABAB CDCD EFEF GG format. The effect is “like going for a short drive with a very fast driver: the first lines, even the first quatrain, are in low gear; then the second and third accelerate sharply, and ideas and metaphors flash past; and then there is a sudden throttling-back, and one glides to a stop in the couplet”. Like Petrarch, Shakespeare used structure to explore the multiple facets of a theme in a short piece.
Sonnet 72
Sonnet 72 is one of 154 sonnets published by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare in 1609. It is one of the Fair Youth Sequence, which includes Sonnet 1 through Sonnet 126.
Sonnet 21
Sonnet 21 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare and is part of the "fair youth" sequence. Like Sonnet 130, it addresses the issue of truth in love, as the speaker asserts that his lines, while less extravagant than those of other poets, are more truthful. Contrary to most of Shakespeare's sonnets, Sonnet 21 is not addressed to any one person. There is no second person, no overt "you" or "thou" expressed in it.
Sonnet 143
Sonnet 143 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare.
Sonnet 114
Sonnet 114 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.
Shakespeare's sonnets
"A Lover's Complaint", is not written in the sonnet form, but is composed of 47 seven-line stanzas written in rhyme royal. Like the sonnets, it also has a possessive form in its title, which is followed by its own assertion of the author’s name. This time the possessive word, “Lover's”, refers to a woman, who becomes the primary “speaker” of the work.
Sonnet 17
Sonnet 17 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is the final poem of what are referred to by scholars as the procreation sonnets (Sonnets 1-17) with which the Fair Youth sequence opens.
Sonnet 154
As the last in the famed collection of sonnets written by English poet and playwright William Shakespeare from 1592 to 1598, Sonnet 154 is most often thought of in a pair with the previous sonnet, number 153. As A. L. Rowse states in "Shakespeare's Sonnets: The Problems Solved", Sonnets 153 and 154 "are not unsuitably placed as a kind of coda to the Dark Lady Sonnets, to which they relate." Rowse calls attention to the fact that Sonnets 153 and 154 "serve quite well to round off the affair Shakespeare had with Emilia, the woman characterized as the Dark Lady, and the section of the Dark Lady sonnets". Shakespeare used Greek mythology to address love and despair in relationships. The material in Sonnets 153 and 154 has been shown to relate to the six-line epigram by the Byzantine poet known as Marianus Scholasticus, who published a collection of 3,500 poems called "The Greek Anthology". When translated, the epigram resembles Sonnets 153 and 154, addressing love and the story of Cupid, the torch, and the Nymph's attempt to extinguish the torch.
Sonnet 16
Sonnet 16 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is among those sonnets referred to as the procreation sonnets, within the Fair Youth sequence.
Sonnet 32
Sonnet 32 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. The writer is reflecting on a future in which the young man will probably outlive him. The writer takes a melancholy tone, telling the young man to remember the writer not because of the strength of the sonnets, but because the love that has been shown to the young man far surpasses any love shown by another poet.
Sonnet 110
Although the sonnets were published in 1609, the exact date of when they were written is unclear. It is estimated that the sonnets could have been written between 1588 and 1593. The sonnets are written about two characters in particular: the Dark Lady and an unknown young man. Scholar Kenneth Muir states that the first 126 sonnets were written about a man and the others were written about the Dark Lady. The identity of the young man is still a mystery today. The only clue that was left about who this young man may be is Shakespeare's dedication to a "Mr. W.H". There has been much speculation of whether who this young man may be. Many scholars have their own idea of who "Mr. W.H." may be. In Raymond Macdonald Alden's book, he has a chapter dedicated to who "the friend's" true identity may be. William Harte was one name that was thrown out there. William Harte was Shakespeare's nephew but the dates do not match up with the sonnet. Scholar Tyrwhitt suggests the name William Hughes. This name was quite the popular choice. The list goes on and on. Scholars thought any man with the initials "W.H." that were active around the same time the sonnets were written could have been this mystery man. Mr. W.H. will remain a mystery till this day.
Sonnet 78
Sonnet 78 is one of 154 sonnets published by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare in 1609. It is one of the Fair Youth sequence, and the first of the mini-sequence known as the Rival Poet sonnets, thought to be composed some time from 1598 to 1600.
Sonnet 50
Sonnet 50 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. It is continued in Sonnet 51.
Sonnet 55
Sonnet 55 is one of the 154 sonnets published in 1609 by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is included in what is referred to as the Fair Youth sequence.
Shakespeare bibliography
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was an English poet and playwright. He wrote approximately 39 plays and 154 sonnets, as well as a variety of other poems.
Shakespeare's sonnets
The play "Edward III" is not generally accepted as having been written by Shakespeare, but it is considered to be perhaps partially written by Shakespeare by a number of scholars, including Edward Capell, Eliot Slater, Eric Sams, Giorgio Melchiori, Brian Vickers, and others. The play, printed in 1596, contains lines that also appear in Shakespeare’s sonnets: "Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds” occurs in sonnet 94 and "scarlet ornaments” occurs in sonnet 142. The same scene of the play that contains those quotations, is a comic scene that features and spoofs a poet attempting to compose a love poem at the behest of his king, Edward III:
Sonnet 82
Sonnet 82 is one of 154 sonnets published by William Shakespeare in a quarto titled "Shakespeare's Sonnets" in 1609. It is a part of the Fair Youth series of sonnets, and the fifth sonnet of the Rival Poet group.
Sonnet 5
Sonnet 5 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a procreation sonnet within the Fair Youth sequence. Sonnet 5 is linked to Sonnet 6, which continues the theme of distillation.
Sonnet 95
Sonnet 95 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.
Sonnet 105
Sonnet 105 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.
Sonnet 126
Written in 1594, Sonnet 126 is one of 154 sonnets by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is the final member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet shows how Time and Nature coincide.
English poetry
Shakespeare also popularized the English sonnet, which made significant changes to Petrarch's model. A collection of 154 by sonnets, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality, were first published in a 1609 quarto.
Sexuality of William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's sonnets are cited as evidence of his bisexuality. The poems were initially published, perhaps without his approval, in 1609. One hundred twenty-six of them appear to be love poems addressed to a young man known as the 'Fair Lord' or 'Fair Youth'; this is often assumed to be the same person as the 'Mr W.H.' to whom the sonnets are dedicated. The identity of this figure (if he is indeed based on a real person) is unclear; the most popular candidates are Shakespeare's patrons, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton and William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, both of whom were considered handsome in their youth.
Sonnet 96
Sonnet 96 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.
Sonnet 68
Sonnet 68 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.
Thomas Thorpe
In 1609, Thorpe published the most important work of his career, Shakespeare's "Sonnets." His apparent disregard for Shakespeare's permission earned him a poor reputation, although modern author Katherine Duncan-Jones has argued that he was not such a "scoundrel" as he was portrayed, and the amiable and admirable Blount would certainly not associate with him if he were a scoundrel. It has even been suggested that Shakespeare "did" sell his manuscript to Thorpe, because of his acquaintance with Jonson as an actor in "Sejanus," who may have recommended Thorpe to him as a good publisher. The dedication, which is addressed to a mysterious Mr. W.H., may have been written either by Shakespeare himself or by Thorpe. Thorpe was probably responsible for the arrangement of the sonnets, with 1-17 being the "procreation sonnets", 18-126 being love sonnets to the Fair Youth (for the most part), and 127-154 being written on a variety of subjects, including politics, sex, and the Dark Lady. Critics have failed to agree whether or not his arrangement was the most apt, but most detect a logical coherence in the order, which is generally retained today. The possibility that the manuscript was provided to Thomas Thorpe by a needy “MR. W. H.,” the dedicatee of the volume and the poems’ possible recipient, seems seldom to have been explored.