Shakespeares Sonnets: All 154 Poems and Their Famous Opening Lines

Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets. Thomas Thorpe collected and published them in 1609 in a quarto titled Shake-Speares Sonnets, which also prints a long narrative poem, A Loveru2019s Complaint. Sonnets 138 and 144 had appeared earlier in the 1599 anthology The Passionate Pilgrim. Most scholars place composition in the 1590s, with revisions into the early 1600s. Exact dates remain unknown. Shakespeare also wrote sonnets inside his plays, including the prologue to Romeo and Juliet.

A Shakespearean (or English) sonnet runs fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Three quatrains of four lines each precede a closing rhymed couplet. Shakespeare pushes the argument forward through each quatrain, then turns or resolves it in the couplet. The earlier Italian or Petrarchan sonnet splits its fourteen lines instead into an octave and a sestet.

The Fair Youth is the young man Shakespeareu2019s speaker addresses across the first 126 sonnets. His identity remains unknown. Scholars argue between two candidates: Henry Wriothesley, the third Earl of Southampton, and William Herbert, the third Earl of Pembroke. Both patronised Shakespeare and match the poemsu2019 picture of a noble young man of striking beauty. Readers still speculate about the dedication to Mr. W.H. without resolution. Most modern readers treat the Fair Youth as a literary figure, not a historical man.

The Dark Lady is the woman Shakespeareu2019s speaker addresses in sonnets 127 to 152. She has dark hair, dark eyes, and a darker complexion, breaking from the fair-haired ideal of Renaissance love poetry. Their relationship turns physical, troubled, bitter. Her real-world identity remains unknown. Scholars have proposed Mary Fitton, a maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth I; Emilia Lanier, an early English woman poet; and others, without consensus. Most modern readers treat the Dark Lady, like the Fair Youth, as a fictional persona.

The printer Thomas Thorpe published the complete sequence in 1609. The volume, Shake-Speares Sonnets, prints all 154 sonnets, then the narrative poem A Loveru2019s Complaint. Whether Shakespeare authorised it remains unknown. The dedication signed only by the printer (u2018To the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets, Mr. W.H.u2019) still puzzles readers. Sonnets 138 and 144 had appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim (1599), but the 1609 quarto holds the only authoritative full text.