Shakespeare's sonnets.

 Published in 1609, the Sonnets were the last of Shakespeare's non-dramatic works to be printed. Scholars are not certain when each of the 154 sonnets was composed, but evidence suggests that Shakespeare wrote sonnets throughout his career for a private readership. Shakespeare's Sonnets are often breath-taking, sometimes disturbing and sometimes puzzling and elusive in their meanings. As sonnets, their main concern is ‘love’, but they also reflect upon time, change, aging, lust, absence, infidelity and the problematic gap between ideal and reality when it comes to the person you love. Shakespeare’s Sonnets speak to us so directly is that they are written with their own afterlife in mind. These are poems designed to commemorate the poet’s beloved for all eternity. In the famous lines of Sonnet 18 Shakespeare suggests that his poem confers immortality: ‘So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee’ 

Shakespearean sonnets:-

"And yet by heaven I think my love as rare,

As any she belied with false compare"

Shakespeare’s sonnets are composed of 14 lines, and most are divided into three quatrains . This sonnet form and rhyme scheme is known as the ‘English’ sonnet. It first appeared in the poetry of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516/17–1547), who translated Italian sonnets into English as well as composing his own.

The ‘Dark Lady’ sonnets:-

Sonnets 127 to 152 seem to be addressed to a woman, the so-called ‘Dark Lady’ of Shakespearean legend. This woman is elusive, often tyrannous, and causes the speaker great pain and shame. Many of these sonnets reflect on the paradox of the ‘fair’ lady’s ‘dark’ complexion. As Sonnet 127 puningly puts it, ‘black was not counted fair’ in Shakespeare’s era.

The ‘Fair Youth’ sonnets:-

Sonnets 1 to 126 seem to be addressed to a young man, socially superior to the speaker. The first 17 sonnets encourage this youth to marry and father children, because otherwise hy end is truth’s and beauty’s doom and date’ (Sonnet 14) – that is, his beauty will die with him. After this, the sonnets diversify in their subjects. Some erotically celebrate the ‘master mistress of my passion, while others reflect upon the ‘lovely boy’ as a cause of anguish.