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Act and scene list

Shakespeare's Sonnets
Sonnet 1 In this first of many sonnets about the briefness of human life, the poet reminds the young man that time and death will destroy even the fairest of living things. Only if they reproduce themselves will their beauty survive. The young man’s refusal to beget a child is therefore self-destructive and wasteful.
Sonnet 2 The poet challenges the young man to imagine two different futures, one in which he dies childless, the other in which he leaves behind a son. In the first, the young man will waste the uninvested treasure of his youthful beauty. In the other, though still himself subject to the ravages of time, his child’s beauty will witness the father’s wise investment of this treasure.
Sonnet 3 The poet urges the young man to reflect on his own image in a mirror. Just as the young man’s mother sees her own youthful self reflected in the face of her son, so someday the young man should be able to look at his son’s face and see reflected his own youth. If the young man decides to die childless, all these faces and images die with him.
Sonnet 4 The poet returns to the idea of beauty as treasure that should be invested for profit. Here, the young man’s refusal to beget a child is likened to his spending inherited wealth on himself rather than investing it or sharing it generously.
Sonnet 5 In this first of two linked sonnets, the poet compares the young man to summer and its flowers, doomed to be destroyed by winter. Even though summer inevitably dies, he argues, its flowers can be distilled into perfume. The beauty of the flowers and thereby the essence of summer are thus preserved.
Sonnet 6 Continuing the argument from s. 5, the poet urges the young man to produce a child, and thus distill his own summerlike essence. The poet then returns to the beauty-as-treasure metaphor and proposes that the lending of treasure for profit—i.e., usury—is not forbidden by law when the borrower is happy with the bargain. If the young man lends his beauty and gets in return enormous wealth in the form of children, Death will be helpless to destroy him, since he will continue to live in his offspring.
Sonnet 7 This sonnet traces the path of the sun across the sky, noting that mortals gaze in admiration at the rising and the noonday sun. When the sun begins to set, says the poet, it is no longer an attraction. Such is the path that the young man’s life will follow—a blaze of glory followed by descent into obscurity—unless he begets a son.
Sonnet 8 The poet observes the young man listening to music without pleasure, and suggests that the young man hears in the harmony produced by the instrument’s individual but conjoined strings an accusation about his refusing to play his part in the concord of “sire and child and happy mother.”
Sonnet 9 The poet argues that if the young man refuses to marry for fear of someday leaving behind a grieving widow, he is ignoring the worldwide grief that will be caused if he dies single, leaving behind no heir to his beauty.
Sonnet 10 This sonnet, expanding the couplet that closes s. 9, accuses the young man of a murderous hatred against himself and his family line and urges him to so transform himself that his inner being corresponds to his outer graciousness and kindness.
Sonnet 11 The poet once again urges the young man to choose a future in which his offspring carry his vitality forward instead of one in which his natural gifts will be coldly buried. The very exceptionality of the young man’s beauty obliges him to cherish and wisely perpetuate that gift.
Sonnet 12 As he observes the motion of the clock and the movement of all living things toward death and decay, the poet faces the fact that the young man’s beauty will be destroyed by Time. Nothing besides offspring, he argues, can defy Time’s scythe.
Sonnet 13 The poet argues that the young man, in refusing to prepare for old age and death by producing a child, is like a spendthrift who fails to care for his family mansion, allowing it to be destroyed by the wind and the cold of winter.
Sonnet 14 As astrologers predict the future from the stars, so the poet reads the future in the “constant stars” of the young man’s eyes, where he sees that if the young man breeds a son, truth and beauty will survive; if not, they die when the young man dies.
Sonnet 15 In the first of two linked sonnets, the poet once again examines the evidence that beauty and splendor exist only for a moment before they are destroyed by Time. Here the poet suggests—through wordplay on —that the young man can be kept alive not only through procreation but also in the poet’s verse.
Sonnet 16 Continuing the thought of s. 15, the poet argues that procreation is a “mightier way” than poetry for the young man to stay alive, since the poet’s pen cannot present him as a living being.
Sonnet 17 As further argument against mere poetic immortality, the poet insists that if his verse displays the young man’s qualities in their true splendor, later ages will assume that the poems are lies. However, if the young man leaves behind a child, he will remain doubly alive—in verse and in his offspring.
Sonnet 18 In a radical departure from the previous sonnets, the young man’s beauty, here more perfect even than a day in summer, is not threatened by Time or Death, since he will live in perfection forever in the poet’s verses.
Sonnet 19 The “war with Time” announced in s. 15 is here engaged in earnest as the poet, allowing Time its usual predations, forbids it to attack the young man. Should this command fail to be effective, however, the poet claims that the young man will in any case remain always young in the poet’s verse.
Sonnet 20 The poet fantasizes that the young man’s beauty is the result of Nature’s changing her mind: she began to create a beautiful woman, fell in love with her own creation, and turned it into a man. The poet, thus deprived of a female sexual partner, concedes that it is women who will receive pleasure and progeny from the young man, but the poet will nevertheless have the young man’s love.
Sonnet 21 The poet contrasts himself with poets who compare those they love to such rarities as the sun, the stars, or April flowers. His poetry will, he writes, show his beloved as a beautiful mortal instead of using the exaggerated terms of an advertisement.
Sonnet 22 This sonnet plays with the poetic idea of love as an exchange of hearts. The poet urges the young man to take care of himself, since his breast carries the poet’s heart; and the poet promises the same care of the young man’s heart, which, the poet reminds him, has been given to the poet “not to give back again.”
Sonnet 23 The poet blames his inability to speak his love on his lack of self-confidence and his too-powerful emotions, and he begs his beloved to find that love expressed in his writings.
Sonnet 24 This sonnet elaborates the metaphor of carrying the beloved’s picture in one’s heart. The poet claims that his eyes have painted on his heart a picture of the beloved. The poet’s body is both the picture’s frame and the shop where it is displayed. His only regret is that eyes paint only what they see, and they cannot see into his beloved’s heart.
Sonnet 25 The poet contrasts himself with those who seem more fortunate than he. Their titles and honors, he says, though great, are subject to whim and accident, while his greatest blessing, his love, will not change.
Sonnet 26 The poet, assuming the role of a vassal owing feudal allegiance, offers his poems as a token of duty, apologizing for their lack of literary worth. He begs his liege lord to protect this expression of his duty until fortune allows him to boast openly of his love.
Sonnet 27 In this first of two linked sonnets, the poet complains that the night, which should be a time of rest, is instead a time of continuing toil as, in his imagination, he struggles to reach his beloved.
Sonnet 28 Continuing the thought of s. 27, the poet claims that day and night conspire to torment him. Though he has flattered both day and night by comparing them to beautiful qualities of his beloved, day continues to exhaust him and night to distress him.
Sonnet 29 The poet, dejected by his low status, remembers his friend’s love, and is thereby lifted into joy.
Sonnet 30 The poet pictures his moments of serious reflection as a court session in which his memories are summoned to appear. As they come forward, he grieves for all that he has lost, but he then thinks of his beloved friend and the grief changes to joy.
Sonnet 31 The poet sees the many friends now lost to him as contained in his beloved. Thus, the love he once gave to his lost friends is now given wholly to the beloved.
Sonnet 32 The poet imagines his poems being read and judged by his beloved after the poet’s death, and he asks that the poems, though not as excellent as those written by later writers, be kept and enjoyed because of the love expressed in them.
Sonnet 33 The poet describes the sun first in its glory and then after its being covered with dark clouds; this change resembles his relationship with the beloved, who is now “masked” from him. But if even the sun can be darkened, he writes, it is no wonder that earthly beings sometimes fail to remain bright and unstained. (This is the first of a series of three poems in which the beloved is pictured as having hurt the poet through some unspecified misdeed.)
Sonnet 34 In this sonnet the sun is again overtaken by clouds, but now the sun/beloved is accused of having betrayed the poet by promising what is not delivered. The poet writes that while the beloved’s repentance and shame do not rectify the damage done, the beloved’s tears are so precious that they serve as atonement.
Sonnet 35 The poet excuses the beloved by citing examples of other naturally beautiful objects associated with things hurtful or ugly. He then accuses himself of being corrupted through excusing his beloved’s faults.
Sonnet 36 The poet accepts the fact that for the sake of the beloved’s honorable name, their lives must be separate and their love unacknowledged.
Sonnet 37 The poet feels crippled by misfortune but takes delight in the blessings heaped by nature and fortune on the beloved.
Sonnet 38 The poet attributes all that is praiseworthy in his poetry to the beloved, who is his theme and inspiration.
Sonnet 39 As in s. 36, the poet finds reasons to excuse the fact that he and the beloved are parted. First, it is easier to praise the beloved if they are not a “single one”; and, second, absence from the beloved gives the poet leisure to contemplate their love.
Sonnet 40 This first of three linked sonnets accuses the young man of having stolen the poet’s “love.” The poet struggles to justify and forgive the young man’s betrayal, but can go no farther than the concluding “we must not be foes.” (While the word is elaborately ambiguous in this sonnet, the following two sonnets make it clear that the theft is of the poet’s mistress.)
Sonnet 41 The poet again tries to forgive the young man, now on the grounds that the young man could hardly have been expected to refuse the woman’s seduction. The attempt to forgive fails because the young man has caused a twofold betrayal: his beauty having first seduced the woman, both he and she have then been faithless to the poet.
Sonnet 42 The poet attempts to excuse the two lovers. He first argues that they love each other only because of him; he then argues that since he and the young man are one, in loving the young man, the woman actually loves the poet. The poet acknowledges, though, that all of this is mere “flattery” or self-delusion.
Sonnet 43 The poet, separated from the beloved, reflects on the paradox that because he dreams of the beloved, he sees better with his eyes closed in sleep than he does with them open in daylight. His desire, though, is to see not the dream image but the actual person.
Sonnet 44 In this sonnet, which links with s. 45 to form, in effect, a two-part poem, the poet wishes that he were thought rather than flesh so that he could be with the beloved. The poet, being mortal, is instead made up of the four elements—earth, air, fire, and water. The dullest of these elements, earth and water, are dominant in him and force him to remain fixed in place, weeping “heavy tears.”
Sonnet 45 This sonnet, the companion to s. 44, imagines the poet’s thoughts and desires as the “other two” elements—air and fire—that make up “life’s composition.” When his thoughts and desires are with the beloved, the poet, reduced to earth and water, sinks into melancholy; when his thoughts and desires return, assuring the poet of the beloved’s “fair health,” the poet is briefly joyful, until he sends them back to the beloved and again is “sad.”
Sonnet 46 In this first of another pair of sonnets (perhaps a witty thank-you for the gift of a miniature portrait), the poet’s eyes and his heart are in a bitter dispute about which has the legal right to the beloved’s picture. The case is brought before a jury made up of the poet’s thoughts. This jury determines that the eyes have the right to the picture, since it is the beloved’s outer image; the heart, though, has the right to the beloved’s love.
Sonnet 47 After the verdict is rendered (in s. 46), the poet’s eyes and heart become allies, with the eyes sometimes inviting the heart to enjoy the picture, and the heart sometimes inviting the eyes to share in its “thoughts of love.” The beloved, though absent, is thus doubly present to the poet through the picture and through the poet’s thoughts.
Sonnet 48 The poet contrasts the relative ease of locking away valuable material possessions with the impossibility of safeguarding his relationship with the beloved. The beloved can be enclosed only in the poet’s heart, which cannot block the beloved’s egress nor protect against those who would steal the beloved away.
Sonnet 49 The poet tries to prepare himself for a future in which the beloved rejects him. When that day comes, he writes, he will shield himself within the knowledge of his own worth, acknowledging that he can cite no reason in support of their love.
Sonnet 50 In this first of two linked sonnets, the poet’s unhappiness in traveling away from the beloved seems to him reproduced in the plodding steps and the groans of the horse that carries him.
Sonnet 51 The slow-moving horse (of s. 50) will have no excuse for his plodding gait on the return journey, for which even the fastest horse, the poet realizes, will be too slow. Returning to the beloved, desire and love will outrun any horse.
Sonnet 52 The poet likens himself to a rich man who visits his treasures rarely so that they remain for him a source of pleasure. The poet’s infrequent meetings with the beloved, he argues, are, like rare feasts or widely spaced jewels, the more precious for their rarity.
Sonnet 53 Using language from Neoplatonism, the poet praises the beloved both as the essence of beauty (its very Idea, which is only imperfectly reflected in lesser beauties) and as the epitome of constancy.
Sonnet 54 Here the beloved’s truth is compared to the fragrance in the rose. As that fragrance is distilled into perfume, so the beloved’s truth distills in verse.
Sonnet 55 Continuing the idea of the beloved’s distillation into poetry (in the couplet of s. 54), the poet now claims that his verse will be a “living record” in which the beloved will “shine . . . bright” until Doomsday.
Sonnet 56 The poet addresses the spirit of love and then the beloved, urging that love be reinvigorated and that the present separation of the lovers serve to renew their love’s intensity.
Sonnet 57 In this and the following sonnet, the poet presents his relationship with the beloved as that of servant and master. As the beloved’s servant, the poet describes himself (with barely suppressed bitterness) as having no life or wishes of his own as he waits like a “sad slave” for the commands of his “sovereign.”
Sonnet 58 This sonnet repeats the ideas and some of the language of s. 57, though the pain of waiting upon (and waiting for) the beloved and asking nothing in return seems even more intense in the present poem.
Sonnet 59 The poet here plays with the idea of history as cyclical and with the proverb “There is nothing new under the sun.” If he could go back in time, he writes, he could see how the beloved’s beauty was praised in the distant past and thus judge whether the world had progressed, regressed, or stayed the same.
Sonnet 60 The poet meditates on life’s inevitable course through maturity to death. Everything, he says, is a victim of Time’s scythe. Only his poetry will stand against Time, keeping alive his praise of the beloved.
Sonnet 61 The poet first wonders if the beloved is deliberately keeping him awake by sending dream images to spy on him, but then admits it is his own devotion and jealousy that will not let him sleep.
Sonnet 62 The poet accuses himself of supreme vanity in that he thinks so highly of himself. He then admits that the “self” he holds in such esteem is not his physical self but his “other self,” the beloved.
Sonnet 63 By preserving the youthful beauty of the beloved in poetry, the poet makes preparation for the day that the beloved will himself be old.
Sonnet 64 Signs of the destructive power of time and decay—such as fallen towers and eroded beaches—force the poet to admit that the beloved will also be lost to him and to mourn this anticipated loss.
Sonnet 65 In the face of the terrible power of Time, how, the poet asks, can beauty survive? And how can the beloved, most beautiful of all, be protected from Time’s injury? The only protection, he decides, lies in the lines of his poetry.
Sonnet 66 The poet lists examples of the societal wrongs that have made him so weary of life that he would wish to die, except that he would thereby desert the beloved.
Sonnet 67 In this first of two linked sonnets, the poet asks why the beautiful young man should live in a society so corrupt, since his very presence gives it legitimacy. He concludes that Nature is keeping the young man alive as a reminder of the world as it used to be.
Sonnet 68 Continuing the argument of s. 67, the poet sets the natural beauty of the young man against the “false art” of those whose beauty depends on cosmetics and wigs.
Sonnet 69 The poet tells the young man that while the world praises his outward beauty, those who look into his inner being (as reflected in his deeds) speak of him in quite different terms. They ground their accusations in his having become too “common.”
Sonnet 70 The poet tells the young man that the attacks on his reputation do not mean that he is flawed, since beauty always provokes such attacks. (This sonnet may contradict s. 69, or may simply elaborate on it.)
Sonnet 71 In this first of a series of four sonnets in which the poet addresses his own death and its effect on the beloved, he here urges the beloved to forget him once he is gone.
Sonnet 72 Continuing from s. 71, this sonnet explains that the beloved can defend loving the poet only by speaking falsely, by giving the poet more credit than he deserves. The beloved is urged instead to forget the poet once he is dead.
Sonnet 73 The poet describes himself as nearing the end of his life. He imagines the beloved’s love for him growing stronger in the face of that death.
Sonnet 74 In this sonnet, which continues from s. 73, the poet consoles the beloved by telling him that only the poet’s body will die; the spirit of the poet will continue to live in the poetry, which is the beloved’s.
Sonnet 75 The poet compares himself to a miser with his treasure. He finds the beloved so essential to his life that he lives in a constant tension between glorying in that treasure and fearing its loss.
Sonnet 76 The poet poses the question of why his poetry never changes but keeps repeating the same language and technique. The answer, he says, is that his theme never changes; he always writes of the beloved and of love.
Sonnet 77 This sonnet seems to have been written to accompany the gift of a blank notebook. The poet encourages the beloved to write down the thoughts that arise from observing a mirror and a sundial and the lessons they teach about the brevity of life.
Sonnet 78 In this first of a series of three sonnets in which the poet expresses his concern that others are writing verses praising the beloved, the other poets are presented as learned and skillful and thus in no need of the beloved, in contrast to the poet speaking here.
Sonnet 79 In this sonnet, which follows directly from s. 78, the poet laments the fact that another poet has taken his place. He urges the beloved to recognize that all of the beauty, grace, and virtue found in the rival’s praise is taken from the beloved, so that the rival deserves no thanks.
Sonnet 80 The poet admits his inferiority to the one who is now writing about the beloved, portraying the two poets as ships sailing on the ocean of the beloved’s worth—the rival poet as large and splendid and himself as a small boat that risks being wrecked by love.
Sonnet 81 The poet, imagining a future in which both he and the beloved are dead, sees himself as being completely forgotten while the beloved will be forever remembered because of the poet’s verse.
Sonnet 82 In this first of two linked sonnets, the poet again addresses the fact that other poets write in praise of the beloved. The beloved is free to read them, but their poems do not represent the beloved truly.
Sonnet 83 This sonnet continues from s. 82, but the poet has learned to his dismay that his plain speaking (and/or his silence) has offended the beloved. He argues that no words can match the beloved’s beauty.
Sonnet 84 The poet reiterates his claim that poems praising the beloved should reflect the beloved’s perfections rather than exaggerate them. He accuses the beloved of caring too much for praise.
Sonnet 85 In this first of two linked sonnets, the poet says that his silence in the face of others’ extravagant praise of the beloved is only outward muteness. His thoughts are filled with love.
Sonnet 86 This final “rival poet” sonnet continues from s. 85 but echoes the imagery of s. 80. The poet explains that his silence is not from fear of his rival, but results from having nothing to write about, now that the rival’s verse has appropriated the beloved’s favor.
Sonnet 87 The poet writes as if his relationship with the beloved has ended—and as if that relationship had been a wonderful dream from which he has now waked.
Sonnet 88 In this first of three linked sonnets in which the poet has been (or imagines himself someday to be) repudiated by the beloved, the poet offers to sacrifice himself and his reputation in order to make the now-estranged beloved look better.
Sonnet 89 This sonnet is a detailed extension of the closing line of s. 88. The poet here lists the ways he will make himself look bad in order to make the beloved look good.
Sonnet 90 Continuing from the final line of s. 89, this sonnet begs the beloved to deliver quickly any terrible blow that awaits the poet. Then the other blows being dealt by the world will seem as nothing.
Sonnet 91 In this first of three linked sonnets, the poet sets the love of the beloved above every other treasure, but then acknowledges that that love can be withdrawn.
Sonnet 92 Continuing the argument from s. 91, the poet, imagining the loss of the beloved, realizes gladly that since even the smallest perceived diminishment of that love would cause him instantly to die, he need not fear living with the pain of loss. But, he asks, what if the beloved is false but gives no sign of defection?
Sonnet 93 The poet explores the implications of the final line of s. 92. It would be easy for the beloved to be secretly false, he realizes, because the beloved is so unfailingly beautiful and (apparently) loving.
Sonnet 94 This sonnet describes a category of especially blessed and powerful people who appear to exert complete control over their lives and themselves. These persons are then implicitly compared to flowers and contrasted with weeds, the poem concluding with a warning to such persons in the form of a proverb about lilies.
Sonnet 95 In this first of a pair of related poems, the poet accuses the beloved of using beauty to hide a corrupt moral center.
Sonnet 96 As in the companion s. 95, the beloved is accused of enjoying the love of many despite his faults, which youth and beauty convert to graces.
Sonnet 97 In this first of three sonnets about a period of separation from the beloved, the poet remembers the time as bleak winter, though the actual season was warm and filled with nature’s abundance.
Sonnet 98 The poet here remembers an April separation, in which springtime beauty seemed to him only a pale reflection of the absent beloved.
Sonnet 99 This third poem about the beloved’s absence is closely linked to s. 98. In the present sonnet, the poet accuses spring flowers and herbs of stealing color and fragrance from the beloved. The sonnet is unusual in that the first “quatrain” has five lines; the poem therefore has 15 lines, the only such sonnet in the sequence.
Sonnet 100 In this first of a group of four sonnets about a period of time in which the poet has failed to write about the beloved, the poet summons his poetic genius to return and compose verse that will immortalize the beloved.
Sonnet 101 Continuing from s. 100, this poem has the muse tell the poet that the beloved needs no praise. The poet responds that the poems are for the edification of future ages.
Sonnet 102 The poet defends his silence, arguing that it is a sign not of lessened love but of his desire, in a world where pleasures have grown common, to avoid wearying the beloved with poems of praise.
Sonnet 103 In this fourth poem of apology for his silence, the poet argues that the beloved’s own face is so superior to any words of praise that silence is the better way.
Sonnet 104 The poet ponders the beloved’s seemingly unchanging beauty, realizing that it is doubtless altering even as he watches. He warns that the epitome of beauty will have died before future ages are born.
Sonnet 105 Arguing that his poetry is not idolatrous in the sense of “polytheistic,” the poet contends that he celebrates only a single person, the beloved, as forever “fair, kind, and true.” Yet by locating this trinity of features in a single being, the poet flirts with idolatry in the sense of worshipping his beloved.
Sonnet 106 The poet, in reading descriptions of beautiful knights and ladies in old poetry, realizes that the poets were trying to describe the beauty of the beloved, but, having never seen him, could only approximate it.
Sonnet 107 This sonnet celebrates an external event that had threatened to be disastrous but that has turned out to be wonderful. The poet’s love, in this new time, is also refreshed.
Sonnet 108 The poet explains that his repeated words of love and praise are like daily prayer; though old, they are always new. True love is also always new, though the lover and the beloved may age.
Sonnet 109 The poet defends his infidelities, arguing that his return washes away the blemish of his having left.
Sonnet 110 The poet confesses to having been unfaithful to the beloved, but claims that his straying has rejuvenated him and made the beloved seem even more godlike.
Sonnet 111 In this first of two linked poems, the poet blames Fortune for putting him in a profession that led to his bad behavior, and he begs the beloved to punish him and to pity him.
Sonnet 112 The pity asked for in s. 111 has here been received, and the poet therefore has no interest in others’ opinions of his worth or behavior.
Sonnet 113 In this first of two linked sonnets, the poet confesses that everything he sees is transformed into an image of the beloved.
Sonnet 114 In a continuation of s. 113, the poet debates whether the lovely images of the beloved are true or are the mind’s delusions, and he decides on the latter.
Sonnet 115 The poet acknowledges that the very fact that his love has grown makes his earlier poems about the fullness and constancy of his love into lies.
Sonnet 116 The poet here meditates on what he sees as the truest and strongest kind of love, that between minds. He defines such a union as unalterable and eternal.
Sonnet 117 In this first of a group of four sonnets of self-accusation and of attempts at explanation, the poet lists the charges that can be made against him, and then says he was merely testing the beloved’s love.
Sonnet 118 In this second sonnet of self-accusation, the poet uses analogies of eating and of purging to excuse his infidelities.
Sonnet 119 Filled with self-disgust at having subjected himself to so many evils in the course of his infidelity, the poet nevertheless finds an excuse in discovering that his now reconstructed love is stronger than it was before.
Sonnet 120 In this fourth sonnet about his unkindness to the beloved, the poet comforts himself with the memory of the time the beloved was unkind to him.
Sonnet 121 The poet responds to slurs about his behavior by claiming that he is no worse (and is perhaps better) than his attackers.
Sonnet 122 This sonnet addresses the hard question of why the poet has given away the beloved’s gift of a writing tablet. After several stumbling tries, the poet ends by claiming that for him to have kept the tables would have implied that he needed help in remembering the unforgettable beloved.
Sonnet 123 The poet repeats an idea from s. 59—that there is nothing new under the sun—and accuses Time of tricking us into perceiving things as new only because we live for such a short time. He reasserts his vow to remain constant despite Time’s power.
Sonnet 124 In this difficult and much-discussed sonnet, the poet declares the permanence and wisdom of his love.
Sonnet 125 The poet, in apparent response to accusation, claims that his love (and, perhaps, his poetry of praise) is not basely motivated by desire for outward honor.
Sonnet 126 The poet acknowledges that the beloved young man grows lovelier with time, as if Nature has chosen him as her darling, but warns him that her protection cannot last forever—that eventually aging and death will come.
Sonnet 127 The poet defends his love of a mistress who does not meet the conventional standard of beauty by claiming that her dark eyes and hair (and, perhaps, dark skin) are the new standard. The old version of beauty—blond hair and light skin—are so readily counterfeited that beauty in that form is no longer trusted.
Sonnet 128 This sonnet uses the conventional poetic idea of the poet envying an object being touched by the beloved. Here, the object is the keyboard of an instrument.
Sonnet 129 This sonnet describes what Booth calls “the life cycle of lust”—a moment of bliss preceded by madness and followed by despair.
Sonnet 130 This sonnet plays with poetic conventions in which, for example, the mistress’s eyes are compared with the sun, her lips with coral, and her cheeks with roses. His mistress, says the poet, is nothing like this conventional image, but is as lovely as any woman.
Sonnet 131 The poet disagrees with those who say that his mistress is not beautiful enough to make a lover miserable. He groans for her as for any beauty. Only her behavior, he says, is ugly.
Sonnet 132 The poet begs the mistress to model her heart after her eyes, which, because they are black as if dressed in mourning, show their pity for his pain as a lover.
Sonnet 133 In this first of two linked sonnets, the pain felt by the poet as lover of the mistress is multiplied by the fact that the beloved friend is also enslaved by her.
Sonnet 134 The poet continues to rationalize the young man’s betrayal, here using language of debt and forfeit.
Sonnet 135 In this first of two linked sonnets, the poet apparently begs his (promiscuous) mistress to allow him back into her bed.
Sonnet 136 In this second sonnet built around wordplay on the word the poet continues to plead for a place among the mistress’s lovers.
Sonnet 137 The poet asks why both his eyes and his heart have fastened on a woman neither beautiful nor chaste.
Sonnet 138 The poet describes a relationship built on mutual deception that deceives neither party: the mistress claims constancy and the poet claims youth.
Sonnet 139 The poet, after refusing to make excuses for the mistress’s wrongs, begs her not to flirt with others in his presence. He then excuses that wrong, only to ask her to direct her eyes against him as if they were mortal weapons.
Sonnet 140 The poet warns the mistress that she would be wiser to pretend to love him and thus avoid driving him into a despair that would no longer hold its tongue.
Sonnet 141 The poet describes his heart as going against his senses and his mind in its determination to love.
Sonnet 142 The poet accuses the woman of scorning his love not out of virtue but because she is busy making adulterous love elsewhere.
Sonnet 143 The poet expands on s. 142.9–10 (where he pursues a mistress who pursues others) by presenting a picture of a woman who chases a barnyard fowl while her infant chases after her.
Sonnet 144 The poet’s three-way relationship with the mistress and the young man is here presented as an allegory of a person tempted by a good and a bad angel.
Sonnet 145 In this sonnet, perhaps written when Shakespeare was very young, the poet plays with the difference between the words “I hate” and “I hate not you.” (Note that the lines of the sonnet are in tetrameter instead of pentameter.)
Sonnet 146 The poet here meditates on the soul and its relation to the body, in life and in death.
Sonnet 147 The poet describes his love for the lady as a desperate sickness.
Sonnet 148 The poet once again (as in ss. 113, 114, 137, and 141) questions his own eyesight. Here, he describes his eyes’ image of his mistress as in conflict with his judgment and with the views of the world in general.
Sonnet 149 The poet argues that he has proved his love for the lady by turning against himself when she turns against him.
Sonnet 150 The sonnet begins with the poet’s questioning why he should love what he knows he should hate; it ends with his claim that this love of her unworthiness should cause the lady to love him.
Sonnet 151 The poet displays the sexually obsessive nature of his love.
Sonnet 152 The poet turns his accusations against the woman’s inconstancy and oath-breaking against himself, accusing himself of deliberate blindness and perjury.
Sonnet 153 This sonnet uses an ancient parable to demonstrate that love’s fire is unquenchable. It goes on to argue that only the mistress’s eyes can cure the poet.
Sonnet 154 This sonnet, like s. 153, retells the parable of Cupid’s torch turning a fountain into a hot bath, this time to argue that the poet’s disease of love is incurable.
Sonnet [138]
Sonnet [144]

//tei:div2[@n='&lang=en']: 0

Sonnet 1

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