Shakespeare's sonnets

William Shakespeare (c. 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) wrote sonnets on a variety of themes. A sonnet is a short poem, and Shakespeare's sonnets are the ones people usually mean when they talk about his work in this form.

When people refer to Shakespeare's sonnets, they almost always mean the 154 sonnets that were first published all together in a quarto in 1609.

Shakespeare also wrote six more sonnets that appear inside his plays, in Romeo and Juliet, Henry V and Love's Labour's Lost. A partial sonnet was also found in the play Edward III.

Context

Shakespeare's sonnets continue the sonnet tradition that spread across the Renaissance, starting with Petrarch in 14th-century Italy. The form was finally introduced in 16th-century England by Thomas Wyatt, and Henry Howard gave it its rhyming beat and divided it into quatrains. Mostly, Shakespeare's sonnets follow the English sonnet style, with its rhyme scheme, 14 lines, and metre. However, they differ in what they say.

Petrarch, Dante, and Philip Sidney wrote about worshipful love for an almost goddess-like woman who could not be reached. Shakespeare instead introduces a young man, and he also introduces the Dark Lady. He explores themes such as lust, being unfaithful, and bitter anger.

The quarto of 1609

The main source of Shakespeare's sonnets is a quarto published in 1609 called Shake-speare's Sonnets. It contains 154 sonnets, followed by the long poem "A Lover's Complaint". Thirteen copies have survived in fairly good condition. A note on the title page of one copy shows that the Elizabethan actor Edward Alleyn bought a copy in June 1609 for one shilling. The sonnets cover themes such as the passing of time, love, jealousy, beauty and death. The first 126 are addressed to a young man, and the last 28 are addressed to, or refer to, a woman. Two sonnets, 138 and 144, had earlier appeared in the 1599 miscellany The Passionate Pilgrim.

The publisher, Thomas Thorpe, entered the book in the Stationers' Register on 20 May 1609. George Eld printed the quarto, and the copies were shared between the booksellers William Aspley and John Wright. The dedication is to "Mr. W.H.", whose identity is not known for certain. Suggestions include William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, and Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton, who was also the dedicatee of Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. Most sonnets have three quatrains followed by a couplet, written in iambic pentameter. The procreation sonnets urge the young man to marry and have children. Often the subjects are called the Fair Youth, the Rival Poet, and the Dark Lady.

Dates

In 1597, Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet was published, and it included sonnets. In 1598, Love's Labour's Lost was published as a quarto, and Palladis Tamia by Francis Meres was also published that year. Meres wrote that Shakespeare's sonnets were being shared privately among friends. In 1599, William Jaggard published The Passionate Pilgrime. By W. Shakespeare., a small book of poems. It included some poems wrongly credited to Shakespeare, along with four sonnets that were his. Jaggard's book sold well, and a second printing was quickly ordered.

On 20 May 1609, Shakespeare's Sonnets was entered in the Stationers' Register. It contained 154 sonnets and the poem "A Lover's Complaint." The book received very little public response. In 1612, Jaggard issued an expanded edition of his anthology, and Thomas Heywood protested the piracy. In 1640, the publisher John Benson released an anthology that included poems not written by Shakespeare. Benson also rewrote the sonnets so they seemed to address a woman. Deliberate misgendering is also found in 17th-century commonplace books. In 1780, Edmond Malone made the 1609 quarto the only authoritative text of the sonnets. In 1986, "A Lover's Complaint" was restored as part of Shakespeare's Sonnets.

Criticism

Shakespeare seemed to make fun of sonnets in his plays, and the references to them are often scornful. Still, he went on to write one of the longest sonnet sequences of his time, one that broke away from many traditions. He may have done this out of literary ambition or been inspired by parts of his own life, though the life-story approach has been explored and guessed at a great deal with little evidence. Critics have instead focused on the text itself, through New Criticism and scholars such as Stephen Booth and Helen Vendler, studying the poems as a "highly complex structure of language and ideas." Some also look at the culture and literature around the sonnets.

Gerald Hammond suggests that thoughtful readers do not need much help understanding the sonnets, and that feeling puzzled is part of reading them. In the eighteenth century, the sonnets had a fairly low reputation in England. In 1805, The Critical Review credited John Milton with perfecting the English sonnet. Near the end of the nineteenth century, Shakespeare and Milton seemed equal, but critics argued over this point for decades.

Like all of Shakespeare's works, Shakespeare's Sonnets have been reprinted many times. The first edition, published in 1609, was printed in London by Thomas Thorpe under the title Shake-speares Sonnets: Never Before Imprinted, and a facsimile of it was edited by Sidney Lee and published by Clarendon Press in 1905. Other prominent editions include variorum editions by Raymond Macdonald Alden, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 1916, and by Hyder Edward Rollins, published by J. B. Lippincott & Co. in 1944. Rollins's volumes can be read at the Internet Archive.

Modern critical editions include those edited by Stephen Booth, published by Yale Nota Bene; Katherine Duncan-Jones, published in the Arden Shakespeare series by Bloomsbury; G. Blakemore Evans, published in The New Cambridge Shakespeare by Cambridge University Press; John Kerrigan, published in the New Penguin Shakespeare by Penguin Books; and Stephen Orgel, also published by Penguin Books. Other modern editions were published by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Oxford University Press, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, where Helen Vendler edited a book about the sonnets.

Sonnets that occur in the plays

Shakespeare wrote sonnets that appear inside his plays, including some of his earliest. These differ from the 154 sonnets published in 1609 because they are written to serve a performance, an explanation, or a story. In his early comedies, sonnets and sonnet-writing are often made fun of. In Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice and Benedick each write a sonnet that shows they have fallen in love. In Love's Labour's Lost, sonnets show that love can make men weak and foolish, and one form used there is also used by Sidney in six sonnets of Astrophel and Stella. The epilogue at the end of Henry V is written as a sonnet, and Romeo and Juliet includes a dialogue sonnet when the two lovers first meet.

The play Edward III has recently become accepted as part of Shakespeare's work. It was first published without an author's name, but since the late 1990s it has been included in complete works as co-written by Shakespeare. Scholars who support this include Jonathan Bate, Edward Capell, Eliot Slater, Eric Sams, Giorgio Melchiori, and Brian Vickers. The play contains lines that also appear in Shakespeare's sonnets, such as a line found in sonnet 94 and a phrase found in sonnet 142.