Sonnet as Part of a Sequence

Shakespeare’s sonnets can be viewed as either 154 separate poems, or 1 long poem; think of a symphony. Each sonnet can be likened to a separate movement, forming a sequence. Likewise, when you look at a single sonnet in a sonnet sequence, you can often get a feel about the sonnet from context.

There is one major caveat about analyzing Shakespearean sonnets in the context of the sequence as a whole: nobody quite knows how the sequence goes. Shakespeare wrote his sonnets primarily for his friends to read. Judging from the intensely personal nature of some of the sonnets, some weren’t intended for publication. Auden also suggests that some sonnets (Sonnet 99, with its fifteen lines, in particular) are not final drafts, as they don’t conform to the sonnet form. (However, you could also make a case that Shakespeare was just tweaking the form slightly, as many twentieth-century poets have done). Also, if every sonnet was intended to be included in the sonnet sequence (even including such misfits as Sonnets 153 and 154, which are about taking the waters at Bath), nobody knows in what order the sonnets go. There have been many attempts to correctly arrange them, none of which is clearly superior, and none of which can be proved correct. So, returning to the symphony simile, viewing Shakespeare’s sonnets solely as a sequence is like listening to a symphony in which all the movements after the first are out of order, some fragmentary scraps of melody that don’t even belong to the symphony are included, and other movements might be rough sketches.

However, some things can be clearly discerned: There are three main characters in the sonnets: a speaker, presumably Shakespeare; a young man, who is beautiful but tends to be cold and aloof, and also has an affair with the speaker’s mistress; a rival poet; and the Dark Lady, with whom the speaker has a guilt-filled and adulterous affair. Sonnets 1-17 are admonitions to the young man to marry, Sonnets 1-126 all appear to be addressed to the young man, Sonnets 127-152 deal with the Dark Lady, and Sonnets 153 and 154 are about the speaker seeking a cure for his ills at the hot springs at Bath. Several motifs run throughout the sonnets, chief among which are his idealized love for the young man, and his carnal lust towards the Dark Lady. Other common themes include the ideas that time will destroy all human beauty, that Shakespeare’s words will immortalize his lovers, sexual jealousy and infidelity, and imagery dealing with darkness and light, life and death.