Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets are among the greatest love poems in the English language, moving from the poet’s urging of a beautiful young man to marry, through passionate and troubled devotion, to the mysterious ‘Dark Lady’ who inspires jealousy and desire. Ranging over love, time, beauty, mortality, and the immortalizing power of verse, they include some of the most quoted lines ever written—’Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ Intimate, musical, and psychologically complex, the sonnets reveal Shakespeare’s genius in miniature. A cornerstone of English poetry, they continue to speak with unmatched intensity about the joys and torments of the human heart.