Sonnets | Criticism

  • Time in the Sonnets

    In this excerpt, Maurice Charney discusses the most prevalent concept and image in the Sonnets: Time. How does Shakespeare suggest we defend ourselves against the ravages of Time?

  • Overview

    In this excerpt, Maurice Charney discusses the development of the sonnet form and the effectiveness of his concluding couplets, the motifs of time and mutability, lyric and dramatic elements, and the poet-speaker's reflections on his creative powers.

  • Themes in the Sonnets

    In the first of three excerpts, David Lloyd Stevenson analyzes the unique perspective on love expressed in the Dark Lady sonnets. In the second excerpt, M. M. Mahood examines the Poet's growing fear that his friend will betray him. Mahood compares Shakespeare's development of the themes of deception and betrayal of friendship in the sonnets with his treatment of these motifs in several plays. In the third excerpt, Philip Martin concentrates on Sonnets 1-17, where, he contends, the principal themes of all the sonnets involving the young man are subtly introduced. Martin also examines the intimate connection between themes and language in the sonnets.

  • Narrative and Dramatic Elements

    In the first excerpt, Heather Dubrow acknowledges the presence of narrative and dramatic elements in Shakespeare's sonnets but asserts that most of Shakespeare's sonnets are interior monologues in the lyrical mode. In the second excerpt, Michael Cameron Andrews maintains that many of the sonnets involving the young man are dramatic in the sense that they are profoundly dynamic depictions of a mind at war with itself.

  • Language and Imagery

    In the first excerpt, Winifred M. T. Nowottny examines the relation between diction, syntax, and imagery in the first six sonnets of Shakespeare's sequence. In the second excerpt, Anne Ferry analyzes Sonnet 15 in the context of the speaker's claim that through the medium of language he can defeat time and immortalize his beloved in verse.

  • The Poet

    In this excerpt, John Klause discusses the Poet's frequent self-abasement and his seeming inconsistency, which Klause regards as part of the speaker's strategy to create and preserve the affection of a young man who is neither lovable nor aware of what love means. Klause also discusses the candor of Sonnets 127-52, judging that the Poet despises the Dark Lady and knows he's a fool for desiring her.

  • The Friend

    In the first excerpt, Stephen Spender suggests that the young man of the sonnets possesses a double or divided nature. Spender also discusses what he sees as the Friend's narcissism. In the second excerpt, Hallett Smith surveys the personality of the Friend and his relationship with the Poet as these are generally represented in Sonnets 18-126.

  • The Dark Lady

    In the first excerpt, Philip Edwards, in seeking an explanation for the different moods and tones in Sonnets 127-52, proposes that these reflect the Poet's struggle to exorcise his feelings of hopelessness by expressing them in verse. In Edwards' judgment, the Dark Lady represents carnal love—a debilitating and contaminating passion that degrades the Poet and imperils his soul. In the second excerpt, S. Schoenbaum, noting that most of what has been written about the Dark Lady is speculation, summarizes what the sonnets themselves tell us about the Dark Lady—little, he points out, from the mostly enigmatic clues in Sonnets 127-52. Schoenbaum also discusses Sonnets 153 and 154, where he finds a suggestion that the speaker has contracted a venereal disease as a result of his affair with the Dark Lady.