William Shakespeare

The Sonnets

By Olha Drahanchuk
“All the world’s a stage, and
all the men and women
merely players.”
Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets published in his
‘quarto’ in 1609, covering themes such as the
passage of time, mortality, love, beauty, infidelity,
and jealousy. The first 126 of Shakespeare’s
sonnets are addressed to a young man, and the last
28 addressed to a woman – a mysterious ‘dark
lady’.
 Common peculiarities

• 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
The ‘Fair Youth’ sonnets
• The first section of sonnets, 1-126, is concerned
with the speaker’s relationship with a young
man. He is socially superior to the speaker,
younger, more beautiful, and according to the
speaker, ignoring his duty to father children.
Throughout these sonnets, the speaker explores
the young man’s beauty, how they treat one
another, what the young man should do in life,
and especially how his beauty is going to fade if
he doesn’t father children.
 The ‘Dark Lady’ sonnets

• The second set of sonnets, 127-152, is

about a relationship with a mysterious
woman known as the Dark Lady. She’s
cruel, beautiful, and responsible for a
great deal of the speaker’s distress. She
has a dark complexion and is very
sexual.
Sonnets 153-154

• The final two sonnets, 153 and 154, are

different from those that came before them.
They stand alone and are usually
considered anacreontics. They deal with wine,
love, and song and are often thought to be
concerned with Edmund Spenser. There are
references to venereal disease, sex, and the
story of Cupid.