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Shakespeare's Sonnets

by William Shakespeare

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Themes: The Dark Lady and Infidelity

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The second and far smaller group of poems (Sonnets 127 through 154) are addressed to a different listener, a woman of dark complexion and "purple" sexual mores whom critics have traditionally called the Dark Lady of Shakespeare's sonnets. Sometimes called the "vituperative sonnets," the last 28 sonnets of the standard collection consist of variations on the poet/speaker's complaints about his female lover's infidelity and/or indifference toward him. In several of these poems, the inference is that the Dark Lady addressed is a married woman; the speaker charges her with betraying both the poet and her husband for yet a third lover. More specifically, in Sonnets 133 and 134, the poet voices his suspicion that the Dark Lady has been having (another) extramarital affair with one of the poet's own friends, possibly with the young man of Sonnets 1 through 126. The possible connection of these two Dark Lady sonnets with Sonnets 40, 41, and 42 (in which the speaker charges his beloved male friend of infidelity with a loose woman) is intriguing. It is by no means evident, however, that Shakespeare intended any such plot bridge between the two groups of poems that make up his sonnets.

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