The Sonnets

I like this edition's cover image showing hands trimming
the tip of a quill pen, ready to set down a new sonnet.

Shakespeare's sonnets were first published in 1609. They were probably published without Shakespeare's permission in a time when copyright didn't exist as we know it.

The book contained 154 sonnets and all but two of them had never been published before. So, this was new material for readers. Shakespeare (or perhaps the publisher Thomas Thorpe) dedicated the collection to "Mr. W.H." whose identity has never been known with any certainty.

The poems are about love, sex, politics, youth, and the mysterious "Dark Lady." Scholars have written about them for hundreds of years. They have been material for lovers and teachers, and for hopeless and hopeful romantics.

Untitled but for numbers, many of them are known for their first line or one phrase in the poem.

For example, "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," and W"hen, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state."

Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, a
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade,
Nor loose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time though grow'st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

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