Sonnets | 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.

A prominent theme of Shakespeare's sonnets is the paradoxical nature of love, and many commentators have discussed this issue. David Lloyd Stevenson, for example, emphasized the literary conventions that shaped Shakespeare's depiction of human passion. In Stevenson's judgment, the poet made use of conventional romantic sentiment but rejected the traditional notion of idealized love. Instead, he argued, Shakespeare emphasized the irrationality of human love—the conflicting impulses of aversion and attraction that are characteristic of the experience of sexual desire. Anthony Hecht...