The story
Shakespeare's Sonnets were published in London in 1609 in a quarto printed for the publisher Thomas Thorpe. It contains 154 sonnets, each in the English form of three quatrains and a closing couplet. Most of the first 126 are addressed to a young man, often called the Fair Youth, whom the speaker urges to marry and who becomes the object of intense friendship and love. The later poems turn to a dark-haired woman, and a final pair are about Cupid.
The sonnet came to England from Italy, where Petrarch had made it the form for love poetry, and Elizabethan poets such as Sidney and Spenser had written sequences. Shakespeare took the convention and turned it on its head, with beloveds who are far from perfect and a speaker who is jealous, ashamed and unsure. Many of the poems were probably written in the 1590s, and some circulated in manuscript earlier, but the book of 1609 is the only edition from Shakespeare's lifetime. Whether he approved it is unknown, and the identity of the 'Mr. W. H.' named in Thorpe's dedication is still a puzzle.
Why it mattered
- The sequence reworked the Petrarchan love sonnet and made the form flexible enough for doubt, desire and decay.
- Lines such as 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?' became among the best-known poems in English.
- The poems fed centuries of debate about Shakespeare's own life, which scholars still argue over.
Sources
- About Shakespeare's Sonnets Folger Shakespeare Library
- Sonnets, first edition Folger Shakespeare Documented
Contested history
Consensus: Shakespeare wrote the sonnets, most probably in the 1590s with some later, and the 1609 quarto was printed by Thomas Thorpe. Who the young man, the dark lady and 'Mr. W. H.' were is unknown.
- Sonnets, first edition Folger Shakespeare Documented
- About Shakespeare's Sonnets Folger Shakespeare Library
- About Shakespeare's Sonnets Folger Shakespeare Library
- What do the Sonnets Tell us About Shakespeare? Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
Community notes
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