The Sonnets (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

By William Shakespeare and Robert Thomas Fallon

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading.  

Shakespeare’s sonnets are love poems that explore the joy, the pain, the regret, and the transience of this most volatile of human sentiments. Readers will find that the sonnets mirror their own romantic experiences, as Shakespeare gives words to the feelings we have all felt at one time or another.  First published in 1609, the sonnets still evoke romance and passion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Mar 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781411466845

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) is arguably the most famous playwright to ever live. Born in England, he attended grammar school but did not study at a university. In the 1590s, Shakespeare worked as partner and performer at the London-based acting company, the King’s Men. His earliest plays were Henry VI and Richard III, both based on the historical figures. During his career, Shakespeare produced nearly 40 plays that reached multiple countries and cultures. Some of his most notable titles include Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar. His acclaimed catalog earned him the title of the world’s greatest dramatist.

Book preview

THE SONNETS

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT THOMAS FALLON

Introduction and Suggested Reading © 2007 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

This 2012 edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

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ISBN: 978-1-4114-6684-5

TO THE ONLIE BEGETTER OF

THESE INSUING SONNETS

MR. W. H. ALL HAPPINESSE

AND THAT ETERNITIE

PROMISED

BY

OUR EVER-LIVING POET

WISHETH

THE WELL-WISHING

ADVENTURER IN

SETTING

FORTH

T. T.

CHRONOLOGY OF SHAKESPEARE AND HIS SONNETS

INTRODUCTION

SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS ARE LOVE POEMS THAT EXPLORE the joy, the pain, the regret, and the transience of this most volatile of human sentiments:

Some of the poems evoke love’s joy, others its despair.

Some decry the cruelty, others the waste, of unrequited love.

Some mourn lost love, others exult in the new.

Some refer to rival poets, others to rival suitors.

Some are addressed to a young man, at times encouraging him to marry, at others praising his youth and beauty, and at yet others complaining of his inconstancy and cold indifference.

Some are composed to a dark Lady, so called because of her swarthy complexion and black hair.

Some express fear of high passion, others revel in it.

Some dwell on the ravages of time upon the radiant glow of a young lover, declaring the poet’s devotion an ageless constant, others proclaim the lines of the poem itself an assurance of eternal youth.

Shakespeare’s sonnets first appeared as a quarto edition in 1609—a quarto was a small book about the size of a modern trade paperback. It is generally agreed, however, that the poet had nothing to do with the publication. There were no copyright laws in those days and a printer could reproduce any work he could get his hands on. Indeed, half of Shakespeare’s plays appeared in quartos during his career, none of them apparently with his approval or to his profit.

The 1609 edition is a bit of a puzzle. It appears that Shakespeare composed the sonnets some ten to fifteen years earlier. The first recorded recognition of the poems was a remark by a Francis Meyers in 1598, praising the sugared sonnets passed around in manuscript among his private friends, and two of them appeared the following year in a miscellany entitled The Passionate Pilgrime. So everything we know points to the conclusion that the sonnets were composed during the mid-1590s, when Shakespeare was in his early thirties. One must wonder why they were not published until so many years later.

Equally puzzling is the aforementioned evidence that the poet played no part in the publication of his sonnets, raising the question as to how they came into the possession of the printer. A short dedication in the opening pages of the book seems to raise more questions than it answers: To the only begetter of the ensuing sonnets, Mr. W. H. It is signed T. T., identified as Thomas Thorpe, a well-known printer at the time. How the sonnets came into his possession is unknown, as is the identity of W. H. If we interpret the begetter not as the poet himself but as the source or the inspiration of the sonnets, we are offered some suggestive possibilities.

The most plausible proposal for the identity of W. H. takes us back to the sonnets themselves. Of the 154 poems in the collection, numbers 1-126 are addressed to a young man, 127-154 to the so-called dark lady (the 1609 quarto numbered them conveniently and they have been so identified ever since). Aside from the questions raised by the fact that Shakespeare addressed some of the most passionate love poems in the English language to another man, it is widely believed that the inspiration for these sonnets was Henry Wriothesley (pronounced Rizley), the Earl of Southampton. If so, it is unclear why the begetter, is W. H. and not H. W. and why an earl is addressed as Mr. It has been suggested that since gentlemen of the time considered it beneath their dignity to engage in any activity as common as publication, Thorpe inverted the initials to avoid embarrassing Wriothesley but cleverly kept them so that the earl could be properly acknowledged.

A sonnet is a highly structured poem, and it is helpful to our enjoyment of any work or activity if we are familiar with that structure from the outset. Modern poets tend to find conformity to a traditional design unnecessarily confining to the creative spirit, but such was not the case in Shakespeare’s time. Poets of his day felt that form was an integral part of meaning and were accustomed to compose in an established tradition. In doing so, they invited comparison to their renowned predecessors as well as their contemporary rivals, whose art they sought to match or surpass. The first edition of John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost appeared in ten books, but he revised it for the second in twelve, again inviting comparison to