Shakespeare's Sonnets

Shakespeare’s presence in contemporary culture is ubiquitous, yet his works seem to be tangled up in a sort of elitist, highbrow veneer, which teachers may struggle to brush off. As a consequence, educational practitioners often resort to rewritings, adaptations and appropriations of Shakespeare’s works in an attempt to reach their young audience. YouTube and other file-sharing platforms, such as Tumblr, Daily Motion and TED Talks, however, may prove extremely useful for designing new approaches to Shakespeare that rely on the manifold connections between the Bard and music. Accordingly, this essay proposes some teaching strategies drawing on hip-hop, rap and contemporary music to introduce Shakespeare's sonnets and plays in the classroom. Although it does not aim to provide an actual lesson plan, this essay explores some of the connections between the Bard and music that teachers may exploit. This may be done through warm-up, lead-in and wind-down activities, or through student-centred tasks. These affinities are investigated in both directions, from Shakespeare’s texts and contexts to music, and vice versa, paying specific attention to the work of the American poet Erik Didriksen and the British rapper Akala before dwelling on the role of music in "The Merchant of Venice".

The Arden Shakespeare published a poetry collection titled On Shakespeare's Sonnets in 2016 in which several contemporary poets have responded to one Shakespearean sonnet of their choice. Most of the themes in the sonnets such as the transience of earthly life, the endurance of love, and the procreation of beauty are retained in their modern versions. However, recent approaches to these themes do not follow the sonnet tradition due to the poets' adherence to modern topics, as seen in the poems of Douglas Dunn, Jackie Kay, and Andrew Motion, and an emphasis on realism instead of the romanticised exaggerations in the sonnet genre, as observed in the poems by Alan Jenkins, Carol Ann Duffy, and Elaine Feinstein. In some of these poems, love for the beloved, for instance, is treated alternatively as a temporary feeling that cannot endure the passing of time. The platonic ideal of love for the beloved is reconstituted with a mother's compassion for her son. The idea of the procreation of beauty is replaced with an adoration of the regenerative power of nature. In some others, the influence of the contemporary context is evident with indications of urban images such as traffic, technology, and shopping malls. Through such examples, this paper aims to discuss some of the rewritten versions of Shakespeare's sonnets to explore the idea that recontextualisation and subversion of the source text are central to the practice of Shakespearean adaptation despite the initial tenet of the production of this particular collection, which is to celebrate Shakespeare's literary heritage.

This seminar paper deals with the issue of heteronormativity in translations of homoerotic elements in Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. The analytical part deals with extracts from three of Shakespeare’s plays: The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It and Twelfth Night, as well as four of his sonnets: Sonnet 20, Sonnet 53, Sonnet 87 and Sonnet 126. It analyses only those plays and examples regarded as homoerotic in the source language, which are then compared with their Slovene translations. The paper deals with the influence of the source language on the translation, the influence of heteronormativised translations on the future development of Slovene linguistic manuals as well as the influence the translation has on the whole play and on the reader. For the plays I chose the translations of Oton Župančič, and for the sonnets, the prize-wining translation of Janez Menart. This paper aims to determine to what extent the translations are consistent regarding content and style.

William Shakespeare had a deep understanding of many things. Among them, astronomy. One of the sources of this knowledge was the work of Giordano Bruno who was far more present in England during this period than he is given credit for. Bruno's work was readily available to Shakespeare as part a library that is known to have been very influential to the Bard. Shakespeare not only knew cosmological theory, both old and new, but he should be counted as a forward thinker in the subject.

In researching my book on time called From Time to Eternity, I was impressed by the number of references to time in Shakespeare’s works. I have now put together a selection of his sayings on time in his various plays and poems. I have also voiced my views on Shakespeare as a man and as a playwright. No doubt these views are not original but they are surely worth restating for each generation to underline his cultural importance. I am also dismissive of the ridiculous view that Shakespeare did not write his own works. His contemporaries had not the slightest doubt about his authorship and only they knew the truth of the matter. Indeed, many of them must have seen him writing his plays as nothing was done privately in those days. It is an insult to the man to ascribe his writings to anyone else but himself.

35 Sonnets belongs to the metaphysical stage of the English poetry of Fernando Pessoa and constitutes the final phase in the personal growth process of the reader; previously having gone through the erotic-sexual stage (constituted by Epithalamium), the affective-moral stage (Antinous), the intellectual stage (Inscriptions) and the spiritual stage (Mad Fiddler). In this final stage, amidst the didacticism of Hermetic-Pessoan philosophy, the author uses the traditional metaphysical themes, following the tradition of the Shakespearean sonnet. However, the Pessoan innovation resides in the originality of the Pessoan neologism and in the novel point of view that each poem adopts. Its originality reaches the syntax; the linguistic games  of "light and soul" allows us to elucidate a unique perspective in contemporary Western poetry; that is, the visual perspective of the intangible. Without having to resort to obvious metaphors or similes, Fernando Pessoa manages to glimpse the Universal Consciousness, inherent to every man, and leads us towards the Divine Promise. The Pessoan metaphysics are not a cry to the resignation of the solitary sailor, but are a new Song of Songs of spiritual ecstasy, before the ancient knowledge of the sages, able to reveal their own divinity.

Most, if not all, scholars around the world, do not understand the different races and their imageries within the Shakespearean works. A young African-American woman named Katrina who is involved with Hollywood said to me in 2015, "You need to dig deeper" and those words lodged deep in my spirit. I spent the next six years travelling the world and examining thousands of historical documents before I found the actual source documents used by the Jewish poet Emilia Bassano, and late last year I managed to finish Tome 1 of my series 'A Comprehensive Commentary of SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS' that I started over 15 years ago. One of the primary sources of the Shakespearean works is the Mantuan 1558-60 Aramaic and Hebrew Sefer ha-Zohar al ha-Torah (Book of Zohar, on the Torah) literally meaning, "Radiance on the Torah" (the Zohar), where the printing was supervised by Rabbi Isaac Bassano. 1 This paper is dedicated to Katrina…

This paper studies mirror images and their relationship to the themes of replication and the perpetuation of physical beauty in Shakespeare's Sonnets. The symbolic potential of mirrors and related images sustains contradictory meanings in the Renaissance lyric: as representations of an individual, these objects connote the reproductive impulse, the lover's desire that the beloved transmit his/her legacy to a next generation; however, as re-presentations, they are repetitions of the subject's sameness, of his desire to preserve his own beauty, and therefore, they address the many dangers of philautia or self-love: sterility, decay, ageing, and death. This paper traces the meanings of self-love in Shakespeare through the theoretical framework of post-Freudian readings of the Ovidian tale of Narcissus, and their construction of notions as narcissism and narcissistic aggression (Lacan, Kristeva). More specifically it focuses on narcissistic desire and its implications on the representations of the ageing lover (the literary commonplace of the senex amans), as well as their incidence on Shakespeare's anxieties about femininity and motherhood.

Задача переводчика-создателя метапоэзии в подлинном, а не постмодернистском смысле слова-кажется более скромной, чем задача собственно поэта. Но она и более трудна. Переводчик гораздо менее свободен, чем поэт первого уровня. Он стеснен не только необходимостью приспосабливать свойства родной речи к свойствам чужой, но и неизменностью оригинала при конечном числе способов его адекватной передачи. Отсюда неизбежная интертекстуальность. Стиль переводов Модеста Чайковского не соответствует нынешним стандартам вкуса, современный читатель спотыкается о его старомодный союз «раз что» (которого, кстати, ни у кого больше нет), а великолепный Маршак зачерпывал у него целые строки и вовсе не от хорошей жизни. Слова «То время года видишь ты во мне» до Маршака уже были написаны Пастернаком, а до него-Брюсовым. Принципы буриме и центона, теоретически немыслимые в классической поэзии, в переводческой практике оказываются не данью постмодернистской иронии и, соответственно, проявлением свободы, как в собственных стихах Клюканова («С Шекспиром долго я беседовал один»), а всегда вынужденным признаком переводческой скованности. Опыт предшественников, позволяющий, казалось бы, добиваться последовательного совершенствования уровня перевода из поколения в поколение, на самом деле ложится все более тяжким грузом на плечи того, кто хочет создать здесь что-то новое. «Ценностей незыблемая скáла»-как хочется верить в нее и как это трудно! Спору нет, вряд ли кто-нибудь предпочтет М. Чайковского Маршаку,

آنچه دربارۀ زندگی شخصی شکسپیر می¬دانیم بسیار اندک و مبهم است، اما غزلواره¬های شکسپیر در عین اینکه اطلاعات ارزشمندی دربارۀ شخصیت افکار وی در اختیار می‌گذارد، حتی از زندگی شخصی وی نیز اسرارآمیزتر است. درواقع غزلواره¬های شکسپیر یکی از رمزآمیزترین آثار ادبیِ جهان محسوب می¬شود، زیرا تقریباً هیچ چیز در آن قطعیت ندارد، و البته همین نکته نیز بر تأویل¬پذیریِ هرچه بیشتر اشعار و در نتیجه بر زیباییِ آنها افزوده است. رازهای کتاب حتی از قبل از شروع شدن اشعار، یعنی از رویِ جلد و مخصوصاً از تقدیم¬نامچۀ آن آغاز می¬شود.

The psychology of Shakespeare’ s own creative process is explored through Adlerian and Jungian eyes to identify Shakespeare’s first creative stirrings. An increased sense of belonging and community feeling  (Adler’s gemeinschaftsgefühl in German) is therapeutic and transformative. Seen through Jungian eyes and the Process of Individuation, Shakespeare’s encounter with “The Fair Youth” of the sonnets and “the better part of me” of sonnet 39 is viewed as relating to the appearance of this new creative Self, a Universal hero-child who writes the plays. 
Keywords: Adlerian Psychology, Jungian Psychology, Shakespeare, Feminine, Symbols of transformation, Gemeinschaftsgefühl, Creativity.

How to know a person is in love with someone body? It is usually through expressing one’s love towards the loved one. It will be considered a strong love towards a beloved but if not expressing it or exaggerating it. Shakespeare’s sonnet, in the beginning, is misleading its readers due to the beginning 12 lines but the end is opposite to its start. As it is a true love between the lovers but not announced everywhere and yet not exaggerated. This paper aims to analyze one of Shakespeare’s great sonnets “Sonnet 130”, which is a satire of Petrarchan sonnets. The paper also looks at the form, and content of the “Sonnet 130” and analyses it to gain a broader insight into the sonnet. Finally, the study focuses on the literary devices used within the sonnet to comprehend Shakespeare’s portrayal of the women image in the sonnet, using the analytical approach.

There were four women that Edward de Vere, writing under the pen name of "William Shakespeare," addressed.  Sonnet 130 is a satire on Petrarchan conceits of golden hair and angelic features, not a real description of his mistress.  One dark lady, who bore him a son in 1581, was brunette Ann Vavasor.  The one with dark eyes is Elizabeth Tudor, of whom he wrote "in nothing art thou black save in thy deeds."  Sonnets 110 and 117 are "penitent husband" sonnets to Anne Cecil when he reconciled with her in 1581. His playful sonnet 138 is probably to Elizabeth Trentham, his second wife, who was much younger than he.

The article examines feminist revision of the sonnet, which have delved deeply into the history of the form to challenge some of its most common themes and tropes. This chapter discusses some of these attempts to reclaim and revise the sonnet tradition. Following a short excursion into the history of the sonnet, it characterises revision as a literary strategy and discuss the sonnets of Patience Agbabi and Sophie Hannah, two contemporary poets who have put their own spin on this very oldold and contested form.

This paper wishes to focus on the literary construction of characters who exert a powerful influence on others, but remain cold and aloof vis à vis the controversial situations in which they push their interlocutors. With reference to influential Renaissance rhetorical views of "movere": i.e., those expressed in Thomas Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique, and in Sir Philip Sydney's Apologie, the dynamics of moving and remaining unmoved will be discussed starting from Shakespeare's Sonnet 94. Princes, whose commands are not susceptible to being questioned or disregarded, are here depicted as examples of characters who move others but remain unmoved, and who ambiguously make others do what they are not willing to do themselves. This dispassionate quality seems to belong to some of Shakespeare's most compelling villains (Iago and Richard III) whose lucid machinations drive their naive victims to disastrous action. Not being moved can take on ambivalent connotations: on the one hand, it is the equivalent of balanced emotion and sound judgment but, on the other hand it indicates callousness, cynicism and lack of pity.

In this article, I address contemporary Hebrew translations of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, specifically those by the Israeli poet Anna Herman. My reading of Herman’s translation of Sonnet 18 contextualizes this translation in the Hebrew translation history of the Sonnets. I discuss how Hebrew retranslations of the Sonnets illuminate and complicate our understanding of shifts in the development of modern Hebrew writing and translation from the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries. How do Herman’s translations ‘compare’, as it were, with the translations that have come before, particularly those by male translators? As part of a neoformalist turn in contemporary Hebrew poetry, I call attention to the ways in which Herman’s translations, which were published in 2006, revitalize our reading of the original Shakespearean English and the Hebrew translations that followed, thereby constituting an altogether contemporary text.

This is a brief look upon the sceptic ideology lying beneath the poems of the two paramount poets, William Shakespeare and Omar Khayyam. My objective is to compare the resemblance found in the poems of these two poets in order to prove that even though they lived in different milieus, they shared an identical sceptic perspective towards death.

Scholars have long recognized three characters in Shakespeare's Sonnets (Fair Youth, Dark Lady, Rival Poet) but confusion reigns in identifying the rivals (one, two, or more?).  Many candidates have been suggested, such as Chapman, Marlowe, etc., but no connection has been established between these poets and Shakespeare of Stratford.  When we consider that the rivals are vying for the favor of Queen Elizabeth, and not the Fair Youth, sonnets 80 and 89 become much more understandable.  Those who believe that "William Shakespeare" was the pen name of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, can see the romantic triangle as rivalry between Oxford and other poets who praise his muse -- Queen Elizabeth. David L. Roper has logically inferred that Walter Raleigh is Oxford's rival, because he was an accomplished poet, a ship captain, owner of a tall building, and host of a coterie called the "School of Night" that discussed occult subjects.  He was a "favorite" of Elizabeth until he married Bess Throckmorton without her permission.

"""Critical essay on the collection "L'Hobby del Sonetto" that was published in Italy in 2003 when Pasolini's entire collection was released. The collection is about homosexual love sonnets dedicated to Ninetto Davoli. Inspired by Shakespeare the poems witness the poet's despair when Ninetto, his life partner, gets married.
Even if the sonnets were written from 1971 to 1973, the theme of an homosexual relation never accepted by society is still very current today"""

Shakespeare deliberately linked his two musical sonnets by numbering them in a 1 : 2 harmonic series, four octaves apart, i.e. 8 to 128. This was in accordance with Pythagorean theory of harmony of which he demonstrated awareness in the famous Lorenzo and Jessica scene near the end of "The Merchant of Venice". Sonnet 8 plays on octave concord. Sonnet 128 plays on the unharmonious sequence of 12 semitones, which "confound" but which make up the octave, followed by the final desired "kiss" of the octave 8. Number 8128 is by, no accident, one of the revered and rare Pythagorean perfect numbers.

In More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor, George Lakoff and Mark Turner argue that poetic metaphors are simply variations and extensions of basic conceptual metaphors that structure everyday language. Based on examples from William Shakespeare's sonnet sequence, this article reconsiders the question of poetic metaphor with a particular focus on the function of emotion metaphors in literary texts. Poetic metaphors of emotion, this study argues, can capture affective states that have no stable place in the English emotion lexicon, such as the feeling of "heaviness" described in Shakespeare's sonnet 50 or the feeling of "worthlessness" described in sonnet 87. Even though poetic metaphors may be derived from basic conceptual metaphors, they can potentially function as absolute metaphors that make historically as well as culturally remote affective states accessible to the intellect.

While an essential component of poetry, form has been frequently overlooked in research on poetry translation or has been addressed under rather prescriptivist approaches, with notable exceptions (Holmes 1994, Jones, 2011, among others). This paper deals with the translation of the poetic form from a descriptivist perspective from a corpus of 69 Spanish translations of Shakespeare’s Sonnets published between 1877 and 2018. It addresses, particularly, the outer form or macrostructure of the poems using one sonnet of each translation as a prototype. This analysis will serve as a basis for classifying these translations according to James S. Holmes’ metapoem forms and for proposing a revision of this model. While there are certain forms or patterns repeated throughout, the diverse solutions show that there is no single favoured way of rendering these sonnets, not even during a specific period (beyond the preference for verse over prose).

By deliberately numbering  sonnets 12, 60 and 126 of his sequence Shakespeare emphasised his repeated poetic stands against the destructive effects of Time. In doing so he displayed characteristics which had been displayed in Renaissance, Mannerist art and followed numerological precedents which were present in Renaissance literature.

Many questions have been raised concerning the identity of the two persons to whom Shakespeare dedicated his Sonnets. The paper concentrates on Shakespeare's "Dark Lady" and delves into G. B. Shaw's play The Dark Lady of the Sonnets whilst trying to disclose the true identity of the woman in question was she Emilia Lanier, Mary Fitton, or someone else?

Poetry translation.
English/Italian
William Shakespeare
Sonetto N. 116
"Amore come simbolo di verità e resistenza"
Traduzione in italiano e analisi del testo.
(Include: Shakespeare: 20, 34, 57, 58, 60, 73, 80, 108, 116, 126, 147; Lope De Vega: “Rota barquilla mía, que arrojada…”)

Il Sonetto 116 di William Shakespeare, che esplora il tema antico dell'amore, da quello amicale a quello prettamente erotico e sentimentale, è l'oggetto di quest'analisi testuale, che prende in esame linguaggio, struttura e immagini di questa poesia, in cui nessuno dei due referenti sembra essere chiamato in causa direttamente. Lo scopo è di considerare il contenuto e le espressioni tematiche dell'amore dalla visione etica del mondo di Shakespeare, piuttosto che reiterare la questione di chi sia il destinatario, se il "Fair Youth" o la "Dark Lady", la quale è stata ampiamente esaminata dall'indagine filologica e storica di eminenti studiosi della poesia di Shakespeare. Inoltre, la vita artistica di Shakespeare, la storia della pubblicazione dei suoi sonetti, e le circostanze dell'ambiente culturale e sociale della corte di Elisabetta I sono stati discussi altrove da me in altri saggi pubblicati su Academia.edu.

Il focus sulla tematica dell'amore rappresentava il contenuto di un "paper" presentato a un work-shop per degli studenti di un Liceo Classico con indirizzo linguistico-letterario, come riflessione sullo sviluppo in Inghilterra della poesia di Petrarca.

One of Shakespeare’s sonnets deals with a woman’s appearance and the natural love that attracts her. Sonnet 20 is one, along with others, that talk of the dark woman, who is a recurring subject in his sonnets (Norton 539). The themes that occur in this sonnet branch from the concept of love itself to wealth and nature. There is also a line that may have been misconstrued over the years that it was republished. This essay is an attempt to analyze the specific words that were chosen as well as how exactly a woman is considered beautiful.

The reason for writing this paper was to prove or repudiate claims that Emilia Bassano and other Bassano descendants were “blackamoors”. A portrait has been shared around the world as a depiction of Emilia Bassano after being published on Facebook by Ansell Ortell in 2015, with the assertion that Emilia was the sole author of the Shakespearean works. The inference is that Emilia Bassano was a Blackamoor, which by definition is a “member of the group of Muslim people from North Africa who ruled Spain from 711 to 1492”. This viral post, amongst other things, caused a young Hollywood scriptwriter to contact me in 2015 regarding proving whether or not Emilia was a Blackamoor. Throughout this paper, I will prove that the Bassano family were not
Blackamoors, but may have been black Hebrews.

[t]o an extent that has not been fully acknowledged, early modern English versions of organic political analogy are similarly fixated with illness: extensively informed by the emergent discourses of Renaissance physiology, nosology, and pathology, elaborate accounts of the body politic's sundry diseases and their remedies make their first appearance in the literature of the period. Political writers, playwrights, and pamphleteers attempted to explain . . . the nature of the corpus politicum's ills.

RESUMEN Este trabajo ofrece una recopilación de traducciones al español de los Sonetos de William Shakespeare publicadas entre 1877, fecha en que apareció la primera traducción de la obra, y 2019. Pese a que la obra original, publicada en 1609, no gozó de gran fama en sus inicios (Blakmore Evans, 2006: 2), a partir de principios del siglo XIX, los Sonetos fueron una fuente de especulación sobre asuntos biográficos (Burrow, 2002: 2), lo que pudo desembocar en un mayor impacto de la obra en los últimos siglos, no sólo en el ámbito anglosajón, sino también en el hispanohablante, como lo demuestra este trabajo. En él se indican, además de los traductores de esta obra al español y las fechas y países de publicación, algunas características relevantes de cada una de las traducciones, como la forma empleada para traducir los sonetos, la presencia de prólogos y otros paratextos o el carácter bilingüe/monolingüe de las ediciones.


ABSTRACT This work provides a compilation of Spanish translations of William Shakespeare's Sonnets published between 1877, when the first translation of the work appeared, and 2019. Although the original book, published in 1609, did not enjoy great popularity in its early days (Blakmore Evans, 2006: 2), from the beginning of the 19th century, the Sonnets were a source of speculation regarding biographical questions (Burrow, 2002: 2), which may have led to a greater impact of the work in recent centuries, not only in the English-speaking world, but also in the Spanish-speaking world, as shown by this paper. In addition to the translators of this work into Spanish and the dates and countries of publication, this article indicates some relevant characteristics of each of the translations, such as the form used to translate the sonnets, the presence of prologues and other paratexts, or the bilingual/monolingual nature of the editions.

The figure of time has been one of the basic issues in William Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1609) which was written on a variety of matters including The Dark Lady and Fair Youth in early modern English. The poems in Sonnets cover themes such as mortality, beauty, love, jealousy and, time. The main objective of this paper is to investigate how Shakespeare deploys the concept of time in his selected sonnets by challenging and at times blaming it for devastating his Dark Lady and Fair Youth. Besides four sonnets that are dealt with in this paper, abstract nature and authority of time are seen in many other sonnets because it is regarded as a cruel tyrant. On the one hand he begs time to leave his beloved young and beautiful; on the other hand, it can be concluded that he condemns time for it kills and devastates everything in the universe, most importantly his beloved.

Undoubtedly, William Shakespeare's Sonnets have achieved enduring popularity through several generations for several reasons. Arguably, one of the factors that accounts for this achievement may be traced to the architecture-content and form-of the poetry. Studies have revealed that the sonnets is a pathfinder in the forging of the Elizabethan sonnets and that Shakespeare, through the poems, is able to hint on several issues relevant to the existence of man. The intention of this paper is, therefore, to carry out a critical assessment of "Sonnet 104" by examining its form and content.

Ver, begin by Ricardo Mena will be recognized as a milestone on the path toward understanding the Elizabethan age and the phenomenon of “Shakespeare” … Here is the most complete, most in-depth rendering to date of the biographical and historical truths that have remained hidden beneath the Shakespeare myth … Ricardo Mena takes us on a guided tour to the otherwise invisible heart of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras; and let it be proclaimed that no previous scholar, no researcher, no author before now has dared to travel so far beneath the surface of the recorded history and the surviving literature. No one till now has maintained the clarity of vision that is shared with us in the following pages.

The result is an unprecedented synthesis of various strands of evidence, all woven into a grand sweep of narrative that spans the golden age of the English Renaissance, informing us about our own history and about the forces that have helped to shape our current civilization ... The debates over “Shakespeare” that begun in the 1800s and continued all through the twentieth century are now bearing fruit; and Ver, begin marks the first real attempt to construct (or reconstruct) the full story, integrating all its pieces so they fit together and make sense, even as each aspect sheds new light on the others. This book is about not only knowing the truth, but, in the end, about understanding it.—Hank Whittemore, author of The Monument and Shakespeare's Son and his Sonnets, quoted from the Foreword of Ver, begin.



The lengthy volume ... is memorable for something yet more ad hoc: its vital energy, freedom of thought, and imaginativeness to rearrange pieces previously frozen on the Elizabethan chessboard. This makes for an intellectual wild ride ... Several monographs twine together in a single revolutionary epic ... In short, the book is an achievement. Perhaps just because of its driving, prolix, protean character, wherein discoveries fly out like sparks along the way, the reader sees a new perspective on the age that reaches beyond the Oxford-centered understanding. With that flair, I expect it will be picked up by a commercial publisher, Spanish or English. Ricardo Mena’s website contains some of the liveliest literary commentaries available on the Internet ... Santayana’s morality lies back of the work, that skepticism is wholesome, that thinkers must not surrender lightly the duty of independent thought. This principled attitude, far from being contentious, imbues the book’s literary criticism with positive rather than adversarial light. Ver, begin is a spiritual advance upon much invective and polemic that have gone before.—William J. Ray, peer review on Ver, begin, the Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter (Vol. 51 Summer 2015).

Many Shakespeare authorities have surmised that Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton, is the Fair Youth to whom the first 17 sonnets were addressed.  If we consider that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, was the author who used the pen name of "William Shakespeare" the meaning of many sonnets is enhanced.  Oxford had an affair with Elizabeth in 1572-73, which resulted in a love-child whose existence had to be kept secret.  He was raised by the 2nd Earl of Southampton to the age of 9, then by William Cecil.  Sonnet 3 tells the poet's feelings about the sun (son) taken away after one hour; Sonnet 36 explains that the poet cannot acknowledge his illegitimate son without harming him.  Sonnet 81 promises him immortality in future generations when "all the breathers of this world are dead" -- indicating that his work was being suppressed in his lifetime.  His love for this son is shown in the dedications to "Venus and Adonis" and "Rape of Lucrece."