Widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language, William Shakespeare is still a celebrated figure in literary circles, if not often cited as an inspiration for every burgeoning scribe out there.
The Bard of Avon is credited with some of the most elaborate and era-defining plays in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. Most, if not all, of current drama and tragedy is derived from works like Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, Henry V, Julius Caesar, and Coriolanus, but theatre is not the only place where Shakespeare has staked his artistic claim.
The playwright also published a collection of sonnets, mostly in the form popularized by Sir Thomas Wyatt, the politician poet who introduced sonnets to the English language in the early 16th century. These sonnets work to highlight Shakespeare’s genius wordplay even beyond the bounds of his dramatic work. Perhaps the best way to do them justice would be to pray beg the Bard himself for help; “For we, which now behold these present days, Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.”
Here’s a breakdown of the sonnets attributed to Shakespeare and why they remain a significant part of English poetry all these centuries later.
What is a sonnet and why are Shakespeare’s sonnets significant?
The sonnet is believed to have been invented under the rule of Frederick II, King of Sicily, King of Italy, and Holy Roman Emperor in the 13th century. The Italian poet Giacomo da Lentini, who was the headmaster of the Sicilian School at the time, came up with the form and progressively perfected it until a “sonnet” (from the Italian word sonetto, meaning “little song”) came to mean a poem consisting of 14 lines with a strict rhyme scheme.
It is only a testament to the sonnet’s incredible thematic flexibility that it has survived in its original form throughout history. While many poets have experimented with the form to create different meters, Shakespeare mostly wrote in the traditional iambic pentameter, not only because of its natural rhythm, but because of the way it can be so expressive in so short a stride. But that’s not the only thing setting Shakespeare apart from his contemporaries. The sonnet initially worked as a worshipful verse attributed to a feminine goddess, but Shakespeare reinvested the sonnet in the conceptual sense and introduced his own philosophies to it, which mostly revolved around the figure referred to as the “Fair Youth.”
Here’s an example of the Shakespearean sonnet not only reflecting love, but also bringing other themes to the fore:
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 wand’rest 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.
How many sonnets did Shakespeare write?
The main body of Shakespeare’s sonnets refers to the 154 sonnets published in a quarto in 1609, but if we take the additional 6 sonnets in Love’s Labour’s Lost, Romeo and Juliet, and Henry V, it would take the total number of his published sonnets to 160. There is also a partial sonnet in Edward III, taken from the 1609 collection’s 94th sonnet, “They That Have Power to Hurt and Will Do None.”
Even after several centuries, Shakespeare’s sonnets continue to invoke universal truths and describe themes like love, mortality, and all the other complexities of the human spirit. The emotional depth of these sonnets is, in my personal opinion, unmatched in the Western canon, and continues to amaze literature buffs and linguists to this day.
What remains, then, but the heedless joy, to open now the Bard’s quarto and breathe deep the product of his literary toil? “O, learn to read what silent love hath writ: To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.”