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A Note on Shakespeare's Sonnets (1768 words) |
 | Conventionally the sonnets fall into three clear groupings: Sonnets 1 to 126 are addressed to or concern a young man; Sonnets 127-152 are addressed to or concern a dark lady (dark in the sense of her hair, her facial features, and her character), and Sonnets 153-154 are fairly free adaptations of two classical Greek poems. |
| Shakespeare's sonnet sequence begins with a series of poems urging the young man to whom they are addressed to get married, so that he will leave the world a copy of his beauty, which will therefore not suffer the ravages of time. |
| Sonnet 78 starts a concern for some rival poet who has engaged the attention and the affection of the young man. The unfaithfulness of the young man leads the speaker to question his moral character with very specific images of infection and disease (which suggests venereal infection--as in Sonnets 94 and 95). |
| Shakespeare's Canon (1191 words) |
| The Sonnets were written over a number of years, mostly, in all likelihood, from 1591-1594, though some are probably later. |
| Whenever one ventures to say which of Shakespeare's plays was written first, for example, and then goes back to re-read the work, one is struck with its maturity and development and feels compelled to put it later in the cycle. |
| Shakespeare seems to have had a definite clown in mind for the part of Launce. |
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