A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 102"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 102", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Studentsfor all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jan 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9781535846073

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17

Sonnet 102

William Shakespeare

1592–1594

Introduction

Sonnet 102, My love is strengthened, though more weak in seeming, is a poem by British poet and playwright William Shakespeare, part of a sequence of 154 sonnets. The date of composition of this sonnet, and of nearly all those in the sequence, is uncertain. Historical evidence suggests that most of the sonnets were probably written during a period spanning 1592 and the middle of the decade and were circulated among friends and fellow poets in manuscript form. Two of the sonnets were published in a 1599 collection of Shakespeare's poems, but the entire sequence first appeared in print in a 1609 Quarto edition (which scholars refer to as Q) published—most likely without Shakespeare's authorization—by Thomas Thorpe and printed by George Eld. (Quarto is a printers' term referring to a book composed of sheets on which eight pages are printed, four to each side; the sheets are then folded twice and cut to produce four leaves, or eight book pages. Quartos are typically somewhat short and squat, compared with folios, whose sheets are folded just once to create a taller, wider, thinner volume.) Only thirteen copies of the 1609 Quarto are known to exist. The next edition of the sonnets appeared in 1640 in a carelessly compiled book of little scholarly value. Not until 1709 was a carefully executed edition of the sonnets published, with further editions in 1766 and 1780.

Sonnets 1 through 126 are addressed to a figure generally referred to as the Fair Youth, an unidentified young man. These sonnets express love in all of its phases, suggesting the possibility of a sexual relationship between the author and the Fair Youth, although most critics see the relationship as one that was platonic and spiritual. As