William Shakespeare (c.

23[a] April 1564 – 23 April 1616)[b] was an English playwright, poet

and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the
world's pre-eminent dramatist.[3][4][5] He is often called England's national poet and the
"Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of
some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems and a few other verses, some of
uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and
are performed more often than those of any other playwright.[6] Shakespeare remains
arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be
studied and reinterpreted.

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18,
he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and
twins Hamnet and Judith.

What is a Shakespearean sonnet?

Shakespeare’s sonnets are poems of expressive ideas and thoughts that are
layered with multiple meanings, and always have two things in common:
1. All sonnets have fourteen lines
2. All sonnets are written in iambic pentameter 154 of
Shakespeare’s sonnets
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) wrote sonnets on a variety of themes. When discussing
or referring to Shakespeare's sonnets, it is almost always a reference to the 154 sonnets
that were first published all together in a quarto in 1609.[1] However, there are six additional
sonnets that Shakespeare wrote and included in the plays Romeo and Juliet, Henry
V and Love's Labour's Lost. There is also a partial sonnet found in the play Edward III.
Shakespeare's Sonnets include a dedication to "Mr. W.H.": William Herbert, the Earl of
Pembroke, is seen as perhaps the most likely identity of Mr. W.H. and the "young man". He
was the dedicatee of the First Folio.
Sonnet 116: Let Me Not To The Marriage Of
True Minds
Home/Shakespeare’s Sonnets/Sonnet 116: Let Me Not To The Marriage Of True Minds

Shakespeare’s sonnet 116 can be seen as the definitive response to the ‘what is
love’ question. The language of the sonnet is as deep and profound as any
philosopher’s could be, expressed in the most beautiful language. Love is given
an identity as an immortal force, which overcomes age, death, and time itself.
Love, unlike the physical being, is not subject to decay.

Shakespeare employs an amazing array of poetic devices throughout the sonnet

to convey the eternal nature of love, and ends by staking everything on his
observations by asserting that if he is wrong, then no-one ever wrote anything,
and no-one ever loved. And in sonnet 116 – as with all of his sonnets –
Shakespeare manages to squeeze all of these thoughts and words into just
fourteen lines.
SHAKESPEARE’S COMPLETE SONNET 116
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Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

SONNET 116 EXPLANATION IN MODERN

ENGLISH
I would not admit that anything could interfere with the union of two people who
love each other. Love that alters with changing circumstances is not love, nor if
it bends from its firm state when someone tries to destroy it. Oh no, it’s an
eternally fixed point that watches storms but is never itself shaken by them. It is
the star by which every lost ship can be guided: one can calculate it’s distance
but not gauge its quality. Love doesn’t depend on Time, although the rosy lips
and cheeks of youth eventually come within the compass of Time’s sickle. Love
doesn’t alter as the days and weeks go by but endures until death. If I’m wrong
about this then I’ve never written anything and no man has ever loved.

Love, Shakespeare tells us, isn’t something that wears itself out over weeks,
months and years, but remains firm right throughout the lives of the lovers, and
doesn’t even end with their death but continues until the world ends.

What’s your take on sonnet 116? Let us know in the comments section below!
Sonnet 130: My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing
Like The Sun
Home/Shakespeare’s Sonnets/Sonnet 130: My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.

SONNET 130: TRANSLATION TO MODERN

ENGLISH
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; coral is far more than her
lips are. If snow is white, all I can say is that her breasts are a brownish
grey colour. If hairs can be compared with wires then black hairs grow
on her head. I know what pink, red and white roses look like but I don’t
see any roses in her cheeks. And there’s more pleasure in some
perfumes than there is in my mistress’ reeking breath! I love her voice
although I know that music is more pleasing to the ear. I admit I’ve
never seen a goddess walking; when my mistress walks she treads
firmly on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think that my love is as
unique as any woman who is the subject of a romantic poem.
Form and structure of the sonnets
[edit]
 Sonnet 30 as a wall poem in Leiden

The sonnets are almost all constructed using three quatrains (four-line stanzas) followed by
a final couplet. The sonnets are composed in iambic pentameter, the metre used in
Shakespeare's plays.

The rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Sonnets using this scheme are known as
Shakespearean sonnets, or English sonnets, or Elizabethan sonnets. Often, at the end of
the third quatrain occurs the volta ("turn"), where the mood of the poem shifts, and the poet
expresses a turn of thought.[27]

The exceptions are sonnets 99, 126, and 145. Number 99 has fifteen lines. Number 126
consists of six couplets, and two blank lines marked with italic brackets; 145 is in iambic
tetrameters, not pentameters. In one other variation on the standard structure, found for
example in sonnet 29, the rhyme scheme is changed by repeating the second (B) rhyme of
quatrain one as the second (F) rhyme of quatrain three.

Characters of the sonnets

[edit]
When analysed as characters, the subjects of the sonnets are usually referred to as the Fair
Youth, the Rival Poet, and the Dark Lady. The speaker expresses admiration for the Fair
Youth's beauty, and—if reading the sonnets in chronological order as published—later has
an affair with the Dark Lady, then so does the Fair Youth. Current linguistic analysis and
historical evidence suggests, however, that the sonnets to the Dark Lady were composed
first (around 1591–95), the procreation sonnets next, and the later sonnets to the Fair Youth
last (1597–1603). It is not known whether the poems and their characters are fiction or
autobiographical; scholars who find the sonnets to be autobiographical have attempted to
identify the characters with historical individuals.[29]

Fair Youth
[edit]
The "Fair Youth" is the unnamed young man addressed by the devoted poet in the greatest
sequence of the sonnets (1–126). The young man is handsome, self-centred, universally
admired and much sought after. The sequence begins with the poet urging the young man
to marry and father children (sonnets 1–17). It continues with the friendship developing with
the poet's loving admiration, which at times is homoerotic in nature. Then comes a set of
betrayals by the young man, as he is seduced by the Dark Lady, and they maintain a liaison
(sonnets 133, 134 & 144), all of which the poet struggles to abide. It concludes with the
 poet's own act of betrayal, resulting in his independence from the fair youth (sonnet 152). [30]
[2]: 93 [31]

The identity of the Fair Youth has been the subject of speculation among scholars. One
popular theory is that he was Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton; this is based
in part on the idea that his physical features, age, and personality might fairly match the
young man in the sonnets.[32] He was both an admirer and patron of Shakespeare and was
considered one of the most prominent nobles of the period.[33] It is also noted that
Shakespeare's 1593 poem Venus and Adonis is dedicated to Southampton and, in that
poem a young man, Adonis, is encouraged by the goddess of love, Venus, to beget a child,
which is a theme in the sonnets. Here are the verses from Venus and Adonis:[34]

Torches are made to light, jewels to wear,

Dainties to taste, fresh beauty for the use,
Herbs for their smell, and sappy plants to bear;
Things growing to themselves are growth's abuse,
Seeds spring from seeds, and beauty breedeth beauty;
Thou wast begot; to get it is thy duty.

Upon the earth's increase why shouldst thou feed,

Unless the earth with thy increase be fed?
By law of nature thou art bound to breed,
That thine may live when thou thyself art dead;
And so in spite of death thou dost survive,
In that thy likeness still is left alive.
Venus and Adonis[35]
A problem with identifying the fair youth with Southampton is that the most certainly datable
events referred to in the Sonnets are the fall of Essex and then the gunpowder plotters'
executions in 1606, which puts Southampton at the age of 33, and then 39 when the
sonnets were published, when he would be past the age when he would be referred to as a
"lovely boy" or "fair youth".[2]: 52

Authors such as Thomas Tyrwhitt[36] and Oscar Wilde proposed that the Fair Youth was
William Hughes, a seductive young actor who played female roles in Shakespeare's plays.
Particularly, Wilde claimed that he was the Mr. W.H.[37] referred to in the dedication attached
to the manuscript of the Sonnets.[32]

The Dark Lady

[edit]
Main article: Dark Lady (Shakespeare)
The Dark Lady sequence (sonnets 127–152) is the most defiant of the sonnet tradition. The
sequence distinguishes itself from the Fair Youth sequence with its overt sexuality (Sonnet
151).[38] The Dark Lady is so called because she has black hair and "dun" skin. The Dark
Lady suddenly appears (Sonnet 127), and she and the speaker of the sonnets, the poet, are
in a sexual relationship. She is not aristocratic, young, beautiful, intelligent or chaste. Her
complexion is muddy, her breath "reeks", and she is ungainly when she walks. The
relationship strongly parallels Touchstone's pursuit of Audrey in As You Like It.[39] The Dark
Lady presents an adequate receptor for male desire. She is celebrated in cocky terms that
would be offensive to her, not that she would be able to read or understand what is said.
Soon the speaker rebukes her for enslaving his fair friend (sonnet 133). He can't abide the
triangular relationship, and it ends with him rejecting her.[2][31] As with the Fair Youth, there
have been many attempts to identify her with a real historical individual. Lucy Negro, [40] Mary
Fitton, Emilia Lanier, Elizabeth Wriothesley, and others have been suggested.
The Rival Poet
[edit]
Main article: Rival Poet
The Rival Poet's identity remains a mystery. If Shakespeare's patron and friend was
Pembroke, Shakespeare was not the only poet who praised his beauty; Francis Davison did
in a sonnet that is the preface to Davison's quarto A Poetical Rhapsody (1608), which was
published just before Shakespeare's Sonnets.[41] John Davies of Hereford, Samuel
Daniel, George Chapman, Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson are also candidates that
find support among clues in the sonnets.[42][43]

It may be that the Rival Poet is a composite of several poets through which Shakespeare
explores his sense of being threatened by competing poets.[44] The speaker sees the Rival
Poet as competition for fame and patronage. The sonnets most commonly identified as the
Rival Poet group exist within the Fair Youth sequence in sonnets 78–86.[44]

"A Lover's Complaint"

[edit]
"A Lover's Complaint" is part two of the quarto published in 1609. It is not written in the
sonnet form, but is composed of 47 seven-line stanzas written in rhyme royal. It is an
example of a normal feature of the two-part poetic form, in which the first part expresses the
male point of view, and the second part contrasts or complements the first part with the
female's point of view. The first part of the quarto, the 154 sonnets, considers frustrated
male desire, and the second part, "A Lover's Complaint", expresses the misery of a woman
victimized by male desire. The earliest Elizabethan example of this two-part structure is
Samuel Daniel's Delia ... with the Complaint of Rosamund (1592)—a sonnet sequence that
tells the story of a woman being threatened by a man of higher rank, followed by the
woman's complaint. This was imitated by other poets, including Shakespeare with his Rape
of Lucrece, the last lines of which contain Lucrece's complaint. Other examples are found in
the works of Michael Drayton, Thomas Lodge, Richard Barnfield, and others.[45]

The young man of the sonnets and the young man of "A Lover's Complaint" provide a
thematic link between the two parts. In each part the young man is handsome, wealthy and
promiscuous, unreliable and admired by all.[2]: 89

Like the sonnets, "A Lover's Complaint" 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. [2]: 85

Story of "A Lover's Complaint"

[edit]
"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.

Dates