Shakespeare’s Sonnets
When thinking about William Shakespeare, who was born in April 1564 – and who died on his birthday fifty-two years later in 1616 – your first association may be the plays that he has written; for instance Romeo and Juliet or Macbeth, which most young people have studied at school or higher level education in the UK. You may even have been to the Globe Theatre in London to watch a performance of a play. But have you read any of Shakespeare’s sonnets?
First, it is necessary to define a sonnet. Martin Seymour-Smith in his book Shakespeare’s Sonnets published by Greenwich Exchange writes that the word ‘sonnet’ derives from an Italian word that means ‘little song’ or ‘little sound’. Seymour-Smith outlines that Dante was the first significant poet who utilised the sonnet form, followed by Petrarch, who was the first to write a sonnet-sequence with the rhyming scheme abba abba cde cde. However, Shakespeare used the scheme abab cdcd efef, which is quite often known as the ‘Shakespearean form’, even though it was first utilised in English in the early sixteenth century by Thomas Wyatt and his contemporary Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey - historically inferior in comparison to Shakespeare.
In total, Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, which were published in 1609. Most of the sonnets are addressed to an unnamed man, addressed simply as ‘Mr W.H.’ who has never been identified. He represents a mixture of beauty, love and praise in Shakespeare’s sonnets. Whilst sonnets 1-126 are dedicated to this mysterious man, sonnets 127 to 152 are addressed to a ‘Dark Lady’ - again, someone who has not been identified. Arguably the most famous of Shakespeare’s sonnets is Sonnet 18. It opens with the line ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’, and is one of the best-known Shakespearean quotations. The sonnet analyses how the beloved can be compared to a summer’s day, but how the significant other is actually ‘move lovely and more temperate’ than this – and will not change and die away as fair weather does - ‘But thy eternal summer shall not fade’.
Another interesting aspect of Shakespeare’s sonnets is how publishers have chosen to arrange them. All of them have been numbered, probably by Shakespeare himself. Changes to the arrangement of the sonnets has previously been made on both aesthetic and biographical grounds, which sometimes differ from the original order in which they were published.
If you are interested in reading more about Shakespeare’s sonnets – and also more about how Shakespeare’s sonnets have been arranged – then you can find Martin Seymour-Smith’s book about Shakespeare and his sonnets on the Greenwich Exchange website here. We also have a wide range of other books about Shakespeare and his plays, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Othello - all of which can be bought from our website.