Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that answer the question.
Query: How many sonnets did Shakespeare write?
Shakespeare's sonnets are poems that William Shakespeare wrote on a variety of themes. When discussing or referring to Shakespeare’s sonnets, it is almost always a reference to the 154 sonnets that were first published all together in a quarto in 1609; however there are six additional sonnets that Shakespeare wrote and included in the plays Romeo and Juliet, Henry V and Love's Labour's Lost.
According to Jonathan Bate, Shakespeare relied heavily on these sections of Ovid's Metamorphoses while composing Sonnet 60, and these passages from Ovid roughly correspond to the three quatrains of the sonnet. Shakespeare would have looked back to ancient sources like many Renaissance writers of his time. In the book "Shakespeare and Ovid", Johnathan Bate states that persons of the Renaissance period "believed passionately that the present could learn from the past" and that this belief "was the starting-point of education and a formative influence on the writing of the period". There was a strong belief in Shakespeare's day that, though times change—changes which are the result of the passing of time—the essentials of human nature, "the foundations of the affections of the human mind," did not change. To look into the past, therefore, meant also for Shakespeare to look more deeply into the meaning of the present.
Sonnet 128 is one of Shakespeare's most highly criticized sonnets, some even believing that because Sonnet 128 is so far from Shakespeare's usual sonnets that it may be unauthentic. According to Richard Purdum in his article, Shakespeare's Sonnet 128, Sonnet 128 is "Un-Shakespearean in sound and rhythm". Sonnet 128 strays from Shakespeare's usual diction, and thus creates its own category in Shakespearean sonnets. H. T. S. Frost said, "Six trifling pieces of little interest – literary or otherwise," referring to the other Dark Lady pieces and their often criticized language like Sonnet 128 and their ill placement with Shakespeare's other sonnets. J. M. Robertson also agrees with Frost's argument that Sonnet 128 and the other Dark Lady sonnets do not fit with Shakespeare's other sonnets. Purdum continues his argument stating that maybe because Shakespeare was writing about the Dark Lady, that his poor quality sonnet was caused by his growing infatuation with the Dark Lady. Purdum, and other critics such as, Barbara A. Mackenzie believe that Shakespeare's immense infatuation with the Dark Lady lead to Shakespeare failing to correct his mistakes within Sonnet 128.
In the sonnet, the poet writes of why he has stopped showering his muse with flowery praise and adoration. In his analysis of Shakespeare's Sonnets, David West suggests that the sequence of sonnets 100-103 and the silence described are a response to the infidelity of the Fair Youth in the Rival Poet sequence of sonnets (78-86), which has caused a rift between the poet and his Muse. He writes of how immediately following the Rival Poet sonnets, the Poet begins to speak of his lover being false and having forsaken him. West claims that this ultimately culminates in sonnets 100-103, where the Poet expresses his regret over what has transpired.
In David Klein's analysis entitled "Foreign Influence on Shakespeare's Sonnets", sonnet writing became a popular pastime during Shakespeare’s time period:
Sonnet 128 is one of the few musical sonnets of Shakespeare's sonnets. Sonnet 128 draws many similarities to Shakespeare's Sonnet 8, and its musical language and theme. Both sonnets refer "my musike", throughout drawing a clear connection to each other. In addition, both sonnets use, a "figurative use of 'music,'" which appears nowhere else in Shakespeare's sonnets. The use of similar language throughout Sonnet 8 and Sonnet 128 continues the musical theme in Shakespeare's sonnets, showing an obvious correlation between the two poems.
The Romantic style of this play makes it almost seem like these characters are reading their own personal eulogies. It is not the typical through line of a play a reader would expect. It does not necessarily have a specific beginning, middle and end. It is written and published as an anthology. There is in fact something beautiful about this writing that displays how the style can, in a way, "make it old" and "make it new," because of the romantic element of having their stories be told in a form of sonnets. A sonnet is considered a poem. Traditionally, sonnets are meant to be a stanza of fourteen lines, that are written in iambic pentameter. Also, originally "the traditional subject of the sonnet has primarily been "Love"." William Shakespeare, is the first and most well known writer for classical sonnets. Since Shakespeare's era it is known that politicians and artists do not necessarily always see the world through the same lens. This has provided some conflict in the past. Although, through Shakespeare's incorporation of romanticism in his texts it supplied a path in which entrepreneurs and artists could share and adapt similar points of view.
Agreeing with Trillini, Paul Edmondson in his book, "Shakespeare's Sonnets" writes about the speaker's lover in Sonnet 128. Edmondson agrees that the sonnet belongs in the Dark Lady series, and also agrees that the sonnet uses many musical allusions and metaphors for the speaker's feelings towards his lover. The speaker in Sonnet 128 is clearly attracted to the woman playing the instrument in the sonnet, but the speaker is not solely attracted to the woman's physical appearance. Edmonson writes, "The sensual touch of his lover's fingers seems to make the poetic voice laugh at the end of this sonnet as Shakespeare refers to the tickling of the instrument's keys, the 'saucy jacks' which like sexual organs can move and respond to the power of a lover's nimble and caressing hands". Thus, making the statement that the speaker in Sonnet 128 is not only attracted to the woman, but the woman's musical talent is part of her attraction.
Shakespeare's sonnet cycle has overarching themes of great love and the passage of time. In this sonnet, the speaker is now concentrating on his own death and how the youth is to mourn him after he is deceased. The speaker tells the youth not to mourn for him when he is dead, and that the youth should only think about him for as long as it takes to tell the world of his death. The speaker then tells his beloved youth that if even reading this sonnet will cause him to suffer, he should forget the hand that wrote the poem. Joseph Pequigney writes that the sonnet is a "persuasive appeal to be recalled, loved and lamented…a covert counterthesis". Stephen Booth calls this sonnet "a cosmic caricature of a revenging lover." While many critics agree with Peguiney and Booth, and have said that this sonnet is a veiled attempt on the part of the speaker to actually invoke the youth to mourn him, some critics believe differently. Helen Vendler writes that "There are also, I believe, sonnets of hapless love--intended as such by the author, expressed as such by the speaker."
The placement of the sonnet leads many to believe that Shakespeare had a direct relation with the "dark lady" (as referenced as the inspiration for sonnets 127-152). Many scholars believe that Shakespeare had an affair and that a mistress was his inspiration for writing as many poems as he did. Even though such a relation was frowned on at the time, it has not been ruled out as a possibility. However, because there are no historical records that such a woman existed, there is not a sufficient evidence to determine whether the woman spoken of in the sonnets was real or fictitious. The sexual pessimism depicted in the sonnets, although extreme, is not unusual to the Christian tradition, especially in ancient times. Beliefs and standards of virginity and sexual abstention can be dated back to Pythagoras, and the views continued to be a tradition through Plato and the Stoics. Sexual pessimism existed before Christianity became a widespread religion.
In Shakespeare’s early comedies, the sonnets and sonnet-making of his characters are often objects of satire. In Two Gentlemen of Verona, sonnet-writing is portrayed cynically as a seduction technique.[76] In Love’s Labour's Lost, sonnets are portrayed as evidence that love can render men weak and foolish.[77] In Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice and Benedick each write a sonnet, which serves as proof that they have fallen in love.[78] In All’s Well that Ends Well, a partial sonnet is read, and Bertram comments, “He shall be whipp’d through the army with this rhyme in’s forehead.”[79] In Henry V, the Dauphin suggests he will compose a sonnet to his horse.[80]
The most notable example of frequent and common instances of courtly love occurs in the writings of William Shakespeare. Shakespeare wrote many sonnets to young men that he admired, praising their beauty, intelligence and virility. He addressed sonnets 1-126 to "Fair Youth"—an individual who is commonly interpreted to be male—and later, in Sonnet 20, refers to the boy as the "master-mistress of [his] passion." Additional examples of Shakespeare writing of same-sex intimacy and courtly love are within his procreation sonnets. In these poems, Shakespeare encourages a young man to marry and have children to preserve his beauty, using loving and occasionally romantic language to communicate his message. Additionally, it is believed by many scholars that Shakespeare's famous Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?") is also about a man, as he dedicated his book of sonnets to an unidentified "Mr. W.H."
In regards to the sonnets having a bearing on Shakespeare’s sexuality, Booth maintains the sonnets are written as a form of fiction. He believes the hermaphroditic sexual innuendos are being overanalyzed and misinterpreted to point towards Shakespeare's own sexuality. In reality, it was commonplace for sexual wordplay to switch between genders. He writes, "Moreover, Shakespeare makes overt rhetorical capital from the fact that the conventions he works in and the purpose for which he uses them do not mesh and from the fact that his beloveds are not what the sonnet conventions presume them to be." Booth maintains that sonnets involving wooing a man are in fact an attempt of Shakespeare to exploit the conventions of sonnet writing. Overall, Booth asserts that the sexual undercurrents of the sonnets are of the sonnets and do not say anything about the sexuality of Shakespeare.
The Rival Poet's identity remains a mystery. If Shakespeare’s patron and friend was Pembroke, Shakespeare was not the only poet that praised his beauty; Francis Davison did in a sonnet that is the preface to Davison's quarto A Poetical Rhapsody (1608), which was published just before Shakespeare’s Sonnets.[49] John Davies of Hereford, Samuel Daniel, George Chapman, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson are also candidates that find support among clues in the sonnets.[50][51]
Although the sonnet tells the subject to read his poems and understand his love rather than rely on a performance, this directly contradicts Shakespeare's writing style within his plays, where he "presents the writing of love poetry in general, and sonnets in-particular, as ridiculous". Patrick Cheney also notes that Shakespeare's plays tends to emphasize "the superior effectiveness of performing an emotion rather than speaking about it." Within Sonnet 23, this is further complicated by the comparisons Shakespeare makes, first comparing himself to an actor and then his collection of poems to a play.
It was, however, Sir Philip Sidney's sequence "Astrophel and Stella" (1591) that started the English vogue for sonnet sequences. The next two decades saw sonnet sequences by William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel, Fulke Greville, William Drummond of Hawthornden, and many others. These sonnets were all essentially inspired by the Petrarchan tradition, and generally treat of the poet's love for some woman, with the exception of Shakespeare's sequence of 154 sonnets. The form is often named after Shakespeare, not because he was the first to write in this form but because he became its most famous practitioner. The form consists of fourteen lines structured as three quatrains and a couplet. The third quatrain generally introduces an unexpected sharp thematic or imagistic "turn", the volta. In Shakespeare's sonnets, however, the volta usually comes in the couplet, and usually summarizes the theme of the poem or introduces a fresh new look at the theme. With only a rare exception (for example, Shakespeare's Sonnet 145 in iambic tetrameter), the meter is iambic pentameter.
Sonnet 109 was originally published in 1609 with the rest of Shakespeare's sonnets as a collection dedicated to "Mr. W.H." and now referred to as the 1609 Quarto or Quarto 1. Sonnet 109 belongs to the group of sonnets (1-126) that are commonly categorized as "sonnets to a fair youth." This group of sonnets, according to Arthur F. Marotti, "consists of poems written to a younger man who is clearly treated as a patron". The identity of this young patron, who is likely the "Mr. W.H." to whom Shakespeare dedicated the sonnets, is considered by many historians and Shakespearean analysts to be Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton. Martin Green supports this hypothesis with the evidence that Shakespeare never wrote dedications in of his works to any person besides Wriothesley. Shakespeare's relationship with this young man as interpreted from this group of sonnets is not entirely clear; his words of love and affection could be a bid for more favor, or as Judith Kegan Gardiner maintains, a true love that surprised and startled Shakespeare. Even if Shakespeare's sonnets are accepted as an expression of genuine love, there is still no consensus in academia whether this love was sexual in nature. Many critics argue that Shakespeare was homosexual, while others maintain that he was heterosexual, including the noteworthy Shakespeare analyst A. L. Rowse, who has claimed "Shakespeare is the bawdiest of the Elizabethan dramatists, with the natural bawdy of the highly sexed normal heterosexual".
Shakespeare addresses many of his sonnets to a young male, whom many have assumed to be identical with Mr. W.H., the person to whom the sonnets as a whole are dedicated. Scholars debate the nature of Shakespeare's relationship with his male companion and question whether it was a close friendship or a romantic love. The sonnets indicate that a woman who Shakespeare describes as the dark lady comes between the poet and Mr. W.H. Sonnet 144 addresses this conflict.
A dominant motif within the first two stanzas of Sonnet 53 is the contrast between shadow and substance. According to G.L. Kittridge, in Sonnets of Shakespeare, "Shadow, often in Shakespeare is contrasted with substance to express the particular sort of unreality while 'substance' expresses the reality." The shadow is that which cannot be expressed in a concrete manner while substance is that which is tangible.
Kittridge goes into more detail about the use of shadow and couplet within the initial couplet. "Shadow is the silhouette formed by a body that intercepts the sun's rays; a picture, reflection, or symbol. "Tend" means attend, follow as a servant, and is strictly appropriate to 'shadow' only in the first sense, though shadows is used here in the second… All men have one shadow each in the first sense; you being only one can yet cast many shadows, in the second sense, for everything good or beautiful is either a representation of you or a symbol of your merits," (Sonnets, p. 142). This definition helps elaborate on Shakespeare's extended metaphor and wordplay, explaining that shadow is that which is not palpable as well as the reflection of the young man in all that is real.
Jonathan Bate, in his work, The Genius of Shakespeare, analyzes the classical allusions within the poem. He writes, "In Sonnet 53, the youth becomes Adonis, retaining a controlling classical myth beneath the surface,' (Genius, p. 48). In addition, Bate writes about how the poem could be interpreted in a way reminiscent of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, "In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Theseus says that lunatics, lovers, and poets are of imagination all compact- their mental states lead to kinds of transformed vision whereby they see the world differently from how one sees it when in a 'rational' state of mind," (Bate, p. 51). This quote draws upon the theme of Shakespeare's attempt to materialize intangible emotions such as love or an aesthetic appreciation for beauty.
Shakespearean scholar Joel Fineman offers a criticism of Shakespeare's sonnets in a broader context that is evident in Sonnet 53. Fineman writes, "from Aristotle on the conventional understanding of rhetoric of praise as all the rhetoricians uniformly say, energetically, 'heightens its effect," (Fineman). In this sense, the praise of the young man is meant to highlight his features and bring them to a literal understanding.
The modern reader may read sonnet 20 and question whether or not Shakespeare's sexuality is reflected in this sonnet. When looking at the sexual connotations in this sonnet it is important to reflect on what homoerotism meant during the time that Shakespeare was writing. Casey Charles discusses the idea that there was no official identity for a gay person at this time. There were words that identified what we would consider to be homosexual behaviour, but the idea of a "gay culture" or "gay identity" did not exist. Charles goes on to say that early modern laws against sodomy had very few transgressors, which means that either people did not engage in homosexual behavior or these acts were more socially acceptable than the modern reader would think. Shakespeare's awareness of the possible homoeroticism in Sonnet 20 does not necessarily illuminate whether or not he himself was actually practicing homosexual behavior.
In "Of Comfort and Despair: Shakespeare's Sonnet Sequence", Robert Witt asserts that in Sonnet 109 Shakespeare comes to the realization of his lover's "Inner Beauty" and how it is a reflection of himself. The poet [Shakespeare]…will remain young as long as the friend [lover] is young because the two are one". This, Witt believes, is what prompted Shakespeare to write Sonnet 109 as a sort of apology for renouncing the friendship between him and his lover after his lover "granted favor to other poets".
Sonnet 102 is one of the 154 sonnets written by English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is one of the Fair Youth sonnets, in which Shakespeare writes of an unnamed youth with whom the poet is enamored. Sonnet 102 is among a series of seemingly connected sonnets, from Sonnet 100 to Sonnet 103, in which the poet speaks of a silence between his Muse and himself. The exact date of writing is unknown, and there is contention among scholars about when they were written. Paul Hammond among other scholars believes that sonnets 61-103 were written primarily during the early 1590s, and then being edited or added to later, during the early 1600s (decade). Regardless of date of writing, it was published later along with the rest of the sonnets of the 1609 Quarto.
Rhian Williams asserts, "In literary value Shakespeare's sonnets are notably unequal. Many reach levels of lyric melody and meditative energy that are hardly to be matched elsewhere in poetry". His 57th sonnet is such a one and epitomises Shakespeare's signature sonnet structure as it conveys the influences of the 14th-century poet, Petrarch, and showcases again Shakespeare's talent. In fact, Danijela Kambasković-Sawers generalises, "The sonnet sequence genre constructs a double sense of immediacy: drawing on the lyricism of its constituent sonnets, it also often generates a perception of a personal narrative when the sequence is read from beginning to end". She goes on to make a comparison between the two poets and the structures of their subsequent sonnets when he states, "Sonnet sequences like Petrarch's or Shakespeare's make possible a narrative-by-episode". Kambasković-Sawers elaborates on the subject of Shakespeare’s controversial yet ambiguous speaker and asserts that while ambiguous speakers were characteristic of both Petrarch's work and a signature of the Elizabethan time period, Shakespeare's differed. "The difference between Shakespeare's and other great Elizabethan sonnet sequences lies in the degree and complexity of his main character's ambiguity, as well as in the skill with which this complexity is managed. Shakespeare's contradictory speaker stands as one of the most important elements of the artistic impact and lasting vitality of the sequence".
Stephen Booth brings up an interesting point that other critics had not really mentioned. He says that a lot of people hope that it is not part of Shakespeare's work due to the odd way in which it was written, "One cannot be certain that the sonnet is Shakespeare's, but the effect it describes- that of being surprised by a sentence that signals one direction and then takes another- is an effect that Shakespeare is very fond of actually achieving in his reader" (500). He seems to believe that this sonnet is Shakespeare's based on the effects that this sonnet evokes.[4] In Schoenfeldt's article he quotes the poet Peter Levi who supports Booth's view some do not want this to be Shakespeare's sonnet by saying, "The unusual and light metre of this sonnet, combined with its trivial theme, might sway a reasonable critic to believe that the poem is early and the pun intended...I find it almost too tasteless to credit, but not quite" (Levi 1988:40).[5] Levi says that as a poet he cannot see how this is something that Shakespeare would want credited to his work considering how different and mediocre this sonnet is to all of his other ones. Even though some critics do not like attributing this work to Shakespeare, it is hard to ignore even with its different format, the similarities it has to other sonnets Shakespeare has written.
The identities of these two characters are still in question but modern scholars tend to focus more on the sexual eroticism and implication of homosexuality in the Sonnets: "The reality of the poet's purported bisexual identity now figuring more prominently than any speculation about real figures with whom Shakespeare might have actually been involved, amorously or otherwise." On the other hand, there are critics who view Shakespeare's relationship with the young boy as a friendship rather than romantic love. This is the view that K.D. Sethna holds: "The problem, of course, is the two main characters round whom Shakespeare's Sonnets exult and agonize with a passionate quixotism of friendship and a frantic fever of love- or, as G. Wilson Knight sums up in the current jargon, "homosexual idealism and heterosexual lust.'" John Berryman, on the other hand, understands the first line of Sonnet 144 to be Shakespeare's way of confessing his romantic relationship with the boy and the dark lady: "This is the sonnet of which the poet John Berryman remarked, in his comments on Lowell in The Freedom of the Poet, 'When Shakespeare wrote ["Two lovers I have"] reader, he was not kidding." Helen Vendler agrees with Berryman's analysis: "Sonnet 144 has an air of confession."
If evaluated through queer hermeneutics, Sonnet 144 can appear to have homoerotic overtones. For example, Oscar Wilde's "The Portrait of Mr. W.H." is a critical analysis of Shakespeare's Sonnets that emphasizes their potential homoeroticism. Wilde believed in the theory that the young man addressed in the sonnets was an actor in Shakespeare's troupe named Willie Hughes. The sonnets are thus a love letter from Shakespeare to Willie Hughes. Wilde writes, "[Shakespeare] finds that what his tongue had spoken his soul had listened to, and that the raiment that he had put on for the disguise is a plague-stricken and poisonous thing that eats into his flesh, and that he cannot throw away. Then comes Desire, with its many maladies, and Lust that makes one love all that one loathes, and Shame, with its ashen face and secret smile." Wilde writes of Shakespeare's mental and emotional battle of whom to love and how to love that person. Wilde writes specifically of Sonnet 144, "[Shakespeare] has his moments of loathing for her [the Dark Lady], for, not content with enslaving the soul of Shakespeare, she seems to have sought to snare the senses of Willie Hughes." In Sonnet 144, the second quatrain is full of dislike toward the Dark Lady, "To win me soon to hell, my female evil / … / and would corrupt my saint to be a devil." 
However, Wilde recognizes that the Willie Hughes theory is that, just a theory. One will never know what Shakespeare was thinking when he was completing the sonnets. "Shakespeare's heart is still to us a 'a closet never pierc'd with crystal eyes,' as he calls it in one of the sonnets. We shall never know the true secret of the passion of his life."
C.B. Cox writes, "In Elizabethan times the crime of buggery was punishable by death. Today this legal term for homosexual intercourse offends our ears, but its use draws attention to the abhorrence with which many Christians of the time (and since) regarded physical intimacies between men. In these circumstances it's difficult to believe that Shakespeare would not only participate in an active homosexual relation with a handsome young man, but broadcast this affair to the world in sexually explicit sonnets pass round among his friends." The competing view of a bisexual Shakespeare conflicts with Wilde's view. Cox bases his argument on the verb "to have." He argues that why must the verb usage of "to have" mean sexually possess? Elizabethan people had trouble believing "had" meant to have sexually when it came to the young man, but Cox writes, "It's difficult to refute Pequiney's contention that in these three examples (Sonnet 52, Sonnet 75, and Sonnet 87) there is a sexual innuendo in "had," particularly when in Sonnet 129, which concerns heterosexual love for the Dark Lady, everyone agrees that there is such an implication. Elizabethan society feared homosexual desire, but embraced heterosexual conquests. Cox writes, "The poems may be based on personal experience but still that doesn't actually prove that Shakespeare 'had' the youth. There's an element of playfulness in the sexual innuendoes, a delight in wit as if Shakespeare is enjoying his own virtuosity and may not have expected to be taken literally... In his poems to the youth he may be using sexual innuendo as a kind of joke, a playful but at times almost serious hint that his affection may even extend to physical desire."