• Shakespeare's sonnets are a collection of 154 poems, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality, first published in a 1609 quarto entitled SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS

• The publisher, Thomas Thorpe, entered the book in the Stationers' Register on 20 May 1609:

• Whether Thorpe used an authorized manuscript from Shakespeare or an unauthorized copy is unknown, although evidence suggests that Thorpe published them without Shakespeare’s consent.

• The first edition of the Sonnets is very rare. Only 13 original copies are known to exist. (Compared to nearly 400 copies of Shakespeare’s First Folio of plays)

• A sonnet is a form of a poem that originated in Europe, mainly Italy: the Sicilian poet Giacomo da Lentini is credited with its invention.

• They commonly contain 14 lines. The term sonnet derives from the Italian word sonetto, meaning "little sound".

• A Shakespearean, or English, sonnet consists of 14 lines, each line containing ten syllables and written in iambic pentameter, in which a pattern of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable is repeated five times.

• The rhyme scheme in a Shakespearean sonnet is a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g; the last two lines are a rhyming couplet.

This example, Shakespeare's Sonnet 65, illustrates the form (with some typical variances one may expect when reading an Elizabethan-age sonnet with modern eyes):

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, (a)

But sad mortality o'er-sways their power, (b)

How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, (a)

Whose action is no stronger than a flower? (b)

O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out (c)

Against the wreckful siege of battering days, (d)

When rocks impregnable are not so stout, (c)

Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays? (d)

O fearful meditation! where, alack, (e)

Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid? (f)

Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back? (e)

Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid? (f)

O, none, unless this miracle have might, (g)

That in black ink my love may still shine bright. (g)

• There are several mysteries surrounding the Sonnets. It is not known for whom, when, or why Shakespeare wrote them.

• There is a cryptic dedication page prefacing the sonnets which has baffled scholars for hundreds of years. Who is Mr. W.H.?

• The poems are directed towards three mysterious individuals known to scholars as:

• “The Fair Youth”, • “The Dark Lady” and • “The Rival Poet”; no one is certain who

these people are.

The Sonnets are organized into three main groupings, by theme, or subject:

• 1. Twenty-six sonnets written mostly to a young man, 17 of them urging marriage.

• 2. One hundred and one sonnets, also written to a young man (probably the same young nobleman as in the first 26). These have a variety of themes, such as the beauty of the loved one; destruction of beauty; competition with a Rival Poet; despair about the absence of a loved one; and reaction toward the young man's coldness.

• 3. The remaining 27 sonnets are written mainly to a woman, popularly known as "The Dark Lady." Many students of Shakespeare's work believe that he had a love affair with this woman.

• The Themes found in Shakespeare’s sonnets veer away from accepted forms of traditional sonnet forms.

• One interpretation is that Shakespeare's sonnets are in part a pastiche or parody of the three-centuries-old tradition of love sonnets;

• He violated many sonnet rules, which had been strictly obeyed by his fellow poets:

• he plays with gender roles (20), • he speaks on human evils that do not have to

do with love (66), • he comments on political events (124), • he makes fun of love (128), • he parodies beauty (130).

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer's lease hath all too short a date:Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimmed,

And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,

Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. Click here to watch

Let me not to the marriage of true mindsAdmit impediments. Love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.If this be error and upon me proved,I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyesI all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,And look upon myself, and curse my fate,Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.CLICK HERE TO WATCH

• As part of the 2012 London Summer Olympic Games, several artists were asked to collaborate on setting a few of Shakespeare’s sonnets to music. (click here for video)

• Using instruments that were contemporary with Shakespeare’s time, and setting Shakespeare’s original words (occasionally altering the lyrics to fit the new melodies), these songs were meant to show that Shakespeare’s words can still speak to people today. (click here for live performance sample)

• Let’s listen to some samples:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer's lease hath all too short a date:Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimmed,

And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,

Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Love is too young to know what conscience is,Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?

Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove:

For, thou betraying me, I do betrayMy nobler part to my gross body's treason;

My soul doth tell my body that he mayTriumph in love; flesh stays no farther reason,

But rising at thy name doth point out thee,As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride,

He is contented thy poor drudge to be,To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.No want of conscience hold it that I call

Her love, for whose dear love I rise and fall.

Thou blind fool, Love, what dost thou to mine eyes,That they behold, and see not what they see?They know what beauty is, see where it lies,

Yet what the best is take the worst to be.If eyes, corrupt by over-partial looks,

Be anchored in the bay where all men ride,Why of eyes' falsehood hast thou forged hooks,

Whereto the judgment of my heart is tied?Why should my heart think that a several plot,

Which my heart knows the wide world's common place?Or mine eyes, seeing this, say this is not,

To put fair truth upon so foul a face?In things right true my heart and eyes have erred,And to this false plague are they now transferred.

• Shakespeare's sonnets can be seen as a prototype, or even the beginning, of a new kind of "modern" love poetry.

• During the eighteenth century, their reputation in England was relatively low; as late as 1805, The Critical Review still credited John Milton with the perfection of the English sonnet.

• As part of the renewed interest in Shakespeare's original work that accompanied Romanticism, the sonnets rose steadily in reputation during the nineteenth century.

• If you would like to earn a soda from Mr. Wheadon, you can choose do one of the following:

• Memorize & recite one of Shakespeare’s sonnets during library

• Write your own Shakespearean sonnet & read it to the class

• Put a sonnet to music and perform it.• Turn a sonnet into a “rap” and perform it.• Create an “Illuminated” Sonnet,

(illustrations surrounding the poem.)

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