The prominent sonnets of William Shakespeare reveal a variety of themes. They are often breath-taking, at times disturbing, puzzling and sometimes elusive in their meanings. Although the main concern of sonnets is ‘love’, they also reflect upon such aspects of life as relentless time, absence, change, unpreventable aging, infidelity, lust and the problematic gap between ideal and reality.
When it comes to the number of Shakespeare's sonnets, the researchers almost always refer to the 154 sonnets. All these rhyming texts were first published in 1609 in a quarto. Nevertheless, there are six additional sonnets that were included in such plays as Romeo and Juliet, Henry V and Love's Labour's Lost. A partial sonnet was found in the play Edward III.
1. FROM fairest creatures we desire increase
2. When forty winters shall beseige thy brow
3. Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest
4. Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
5. Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
6. Then let not winter's ragged hand deface
7. Lo! in the orient when the gracious light
8. Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
9. Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye
10. For shame! deny that thou bear'st love to any
11. As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou growest
12. When I do count the clock that tells the time
13. O, that you were yourself! but, love, you are
14. Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck
15. When I consider every thing that grows
16. But wherefore do not you a mightier way
17. Who will believe my verse in time to come
18. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
19. Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws
20. A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted
21. So is it not with me as with that Muse
22. My glass shall not persuade me I am old
23. As an unperfect actor on the stage
24. Mine eye hath play'd the painter and hath stell'd
25. Let those who are in favour with their stars
26. Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage
27. Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed
28. How can I then return in happy plight
29. When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
30. When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
31. Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts
32. If thou survive my well-contented day
33. Full many a glorious morning have I seen
34. Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day
35. No more be grieved at that which thou hast done
36. Let me confess that we two must be twain
37. As a decrepit father takes delight
38. How can my Muse want subject to invent
39. O, how thy worth with manners may I sing
40. Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all
41. Those petty wrongs that liberty commits
42. That thou hast her, it is not all my grief
43. When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see
44. If the dull substance of my flesh were thought
45. The other two, slight air and purging fire
46. Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war
47. Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took
48. How careful was I, when I took my way
49. Against that time, if ever that time come
50. How heavy do I journey on the way
51. Thus can my love excuse the slow offence
52. So am I as the rich, whose blessed key
53. What is your substance, whereof are you made
54. O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
55. Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
56. Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said
57. Being your slave, what should I do but tend
58. That god forbid that made me first your slave
59. If there be nothing new, but that which is
60. Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore
61. Is it thy will thy image should keep open
62. Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye
63. Against my love shall be, as I am now
64. When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
65. Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
66. Tired with all these, for restful death I cry
67. Ah! wherefore with infection should he live
68. Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn
69. Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view
70. That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect
71. No longer mourn for me when I am dead
72. O, lest the world should task you to recite
73. That time of year thou mayst in me behold
74. But be contented: when that fell arrest
75. So are you to my thoughts as food to life
76. Why is my verse so barren of new pride
77. Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear
78. So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse
79. Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid
80. O, how I faint when I of you do write
81. Or I shall live your epitaph to make
82. I grant thou wert not married to my Muse
83. I never saw that you did painting need
84. Who is it that says most? which can say more
85. My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still
86. Was it the proud full sail of his great verse
87. Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing
88. When thou shalt be disposed to set me light
89. Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault
90. Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now
91. Some glory in their birth, some in their skill
92. But do thy worst to steal thyself away
93. So shall I live, supposing thou art true
94. They that have power to hurt and will do none
95. How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame
96. Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness
97. How like a winter hath my absence been
98. From you have I been absent in the spring
99. The forward violet thus did I chide
100. Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long
101. O truant Muse, what shall be thy amends
102. My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming
103. Alack, what poverty my Muse brings forth
104. To me, fair friend, you never can be old
105. Let not my love be call'd idolatry
106. When in the chronicle of wasted time
107. Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
108. What's in the brain that ink may character
109. O, never say that I was false of heart
110. Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there
111. O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide
112. Your love and pity doth the impression fill
113. Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind
114. Or whether doth my mind, being crown'd with you
115. Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
116. Let me not to the marriage of true minds
117. Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all
118. Like as, to make our appetites more keen
119. What potions have I drunk of Siren tears
120. That you were once unkind befriends me now
121. 'Tis better to be vile than vile esteem'd
122. Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
123. No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change
124. If my dear love were but the child of state
125. Were 't aught to me I bore the canopy
126. O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
127. In the old age black was not counted fair
128. How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st
129. The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
130. My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun
131. Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art
132. Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me
133. Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan
134. So, now I have confess'd that he is thine
135. Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy 'Will
136. If thy soul cheque thee that I come so near
137. Thou blind fool, Love, what dost thou to mine eyes
138. When my love swears that she is made of truth
139. O, call not me to justify the wrong
140. Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press
141. In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes
142. Love is my sin and thy dear virtue hate
143. Lo! as a careful housewife runs to catch
144. Two loves I have of comfort and despair
145. Those lips that Love's own hand did make
146. Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth
147. My love is as a fever, longing still
148. O me, what eyes hath Love put in my head
149. Canst thou, O cruel! say I love thee not
150. O, from what power hast thou this powerful might
151. Love is too young to know what conscience is
152. In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn
153. Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep
154. The little Love-god lying once asleep
It is widely acknowledged that Shakespeare was not the first English poet that wrote sonnets. In fact, they had been written by English poets for nearly a century before Shakespeare. The Italian sonnet is considered the novelty of Sir Thomas Wyatt. He introduced it sometime to English literature in the early sixteenth century. We can find sonnets in the creation of Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, who wrote them as well as translated from existing Italian hallmarks of the genre.
The Italian sonnets were also known as Petrarchan sonnets. Still, Francesco Petrarch, an Italian lyrical poet of XIV century is not the creator the Italian sonnet, he was just the perfecter of the form. Instead, Giacomo da Lentini who composed poetry in the literary Sicilian dialect in the XIII century is considered the real originator of the sonnet.
A Shakespearean sonnet represents a variation on the Italian sonnet tradition. This form appeared in England during the time of the Elizabethan era. That is why they are sometimes called Elizabethan or English sonnets.
Like all traditional poetry of this genre the Shakespearean sonnets are fourteen-lines long. These fourteen lines are usually combined in one stanza of text but in the course of time poets embraced the manner of breaking the structure up into several stanzas. These are mostly made with the main form of the sonnet in mind. Regardless of whether the sonnet includes one stanza of text, it can be separated into sets of four lines – quatrains. These make up the main part of the poem. Then come a couplet or set of two rhyming lines.
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