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Sonnets | Shakespeare and the Narrator of the Sonnets

Essay discussing the narrator of the sonnets and the debate as to whether the narrator is Shakespeare himself. Examines clues within the sonnets themselves, and scholarly research.

Whether or not the pronoun "I" is explicitly present in their individual texts, all of the 154 verse pieces that comprise Shakespeare's sonnets are presumably narrated by a single persona. The narrator of the sonnets has a distinctive character and appears to partake in an ongoing story that revolves around his Platonic relationship to a "fair youth" and is later complicated by his carnal relationship with a "dark lady." Although the pendulum has swung back and forth over centuries of interpretation, throughout the history of Shakespeare sonnet criticism we find a deep division...

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